A warm welcome to author C. Zampa joining us today here @Love Bytes on their blog tour for Candy G: Roots!
Welcome, C. Zampa!
Author Name: C. Zampa
Book Name: Candy G – Roots
Release Date: September 2, 2015
Pages or Words: 200 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Cover Artist: Reese Dante
Blurb:
It’s said you can’t go home again….
The last thing Candelario “Candy” Gonzalez wants is to go back to his roots in the barrio. At sixteen, he grabs a one-way ticket to luxury and comfort as the lover and protégé of powerful drug lord, Teirso Flores.
Flores molds beautiful Candy for his own agenda—to become his exclusive attorney, and Candy’s prowess brings the term criminal defense to a new level.
But life in the very dark, very fast lane comes to a screeching halt when a child is killed by one of Flores’s thugs during a drive-by shooting. Candy walks away from his law practice and away from Flores, determined to live honestly.
Carlos Alvarez stirs both desire and confusion in Candy, because young Carlos symbolizes everything Candy left behind. Inching from his universe of opulence and power and into Carlos’s world, Candy realizes the only happiness he ever knew was in his past. Crossing the boundary isn’t easy though, and Candy’s newfound hope draws out the demons he thought he’d escaped.
Categories: Contemporary, Fiction, Gay Fiction, M/M Romance, Romance
Today I’m very happy to be interviewing C. Zampa author of Candy G – Roots. Hi C. Zampa, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.
I was born and raised in Texas and live in a suburb just east of Houston.
Like most authors, I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember—beginning with pre-fan-fic of favorite stars of my day written and shared with me and my pals from school.
If I wasn’t writing, I was drawing stories, complete with dialogue bubbles, the whole nine yards.
My current book is ‘Candy G – Roots’, a re-write of my first published book, ‘Candy G’. The story has been a major revamp of the original, complete with a new plot, some new characters and new POVs of the main characters.
It’s a man’s struggle to ease back into life after quitting his career as the lover and exclusive attorney for San Antonio’s most powerful drug lord. Candelario “Candy” Gonzalez meets and falls hard for Carlos Alvarez, a beautiful street wise young man who reminds Candy of his past and all the goodness and happiness that entailed. The track back to that happiness isn’t that easy, though. And it just might put all involved in a fight for their lives.
Do you buy a book because of the cover, the blurb, or something else?
I confess. I DO zoom straight in to a cover before anything else. I just do. But, having learned that a good cover doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good book nor does a not-so-appealing cover mean it’s a not-so-appealing book—I’m trying to break myself of that habit.
What does ‘romance’ mean to you?
Tough question. I think ‘romance’ is defined by each individual character. For some, it’s attraction and physical. For others, it’s not even physical but purely soul-talking-to-soul. But for me, personally, romance is just a beautiful stirring of the heart by anything that touches our heart—from music to flowers to a beautiful day to a smile to….and so on and so on. Anything that can make a heart smile.
What are your current projects?
So many things. Actually started, though, are a sequel to my book, Honor C, a novel to follow Candy G –Roots about Candy’s friend Jesse.
What is the most difficult part of writing for you?
For some, they flow so smooth and natural and fast. For me, they flow this way in my head, but to put my thoughts into actual words is most difficult.
Tell us something about yourself that would surprise people.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I am maybe the most boring person that ever lived.
San Antonio, 2011
SHE PIERCED me with her stare. She willed me dead.
Who could blame her for wishing a bullet would find me, kill me, and send me straight to hell? I couldn’t. I was, after all, the attorney for the man who’d caused the death of her baby. In her eyes and in the eyes of her community, I might as well have killed the child myself.
Still, even though her hatred tried so damn hard to annihilate me through the dense forest of bodies in the courtroom, I wasn’t fazed. I had no conscience. I wasn’t paid to have one of those things—consciences, that is. I was only paid to defend the man who… caused the death of her baby.
Baby. Caused the death of.
Goddamn.
Why now, after all these years, had this alien intrusion—this fucking thing called conscience—begun to creep up?
Because deep in her brown eyes—the eyes of this mother whose child had been murdered—I saw something else besides her hate for me. I saw something I recognized and knew intimately. Something that ripped through me and knocked me to my knees.
I saw pain. And helplessness. And I knew, I knew so damn well, what an ungodly hell it was when pain, anger, and hate mingled to create helplessness.
I saw a proud, proud woman whose world had been gunned down. A proud woman who’d surely been the strength of her family, who would now—by my hands, by my legal prowess—be stripped of her pride and confidence.
I saw a woman who had done absolutely nothing to have deserved the hell my client had brought down on her. Nor had she done anything to deserve the even worse hell I was about to send her to.
Right then, as though some ungodly tight mainspring had broken inside me, my soul shattered.
I leaned close to whisper in my smug client’s ear, “I quit.”
And I walked away.
Buy the book:
C. Zampa’s earliest stories were not written words, but drawings. Adventures, romances—all drawn in comic book style, complete with dialogue bubbles. Countless hours were spent in her room with her Mead Academie sketch pad and pencils. While the stereo headphones piped the classics into her ears, she feverishly sketched the wonderful characters who lived in her head, creating little vignettes for them.
Even her early drawings reflected romance as she felt it—erotic, sensual, natural, uninhibited.
In her pseudo-hippie days of high school, she began to write. Her teachers encouraged her to take her writing seriously, but to her it was strictly for pleasure. Once entering the working world, she left writing behind; but, a few years ago, overwhelmed by a need to create, she opened a blank document and began to write again and has not stopped since.
Where to find the author:
Tour Dates & Stops:
16-Oct: Bayou Book Junkie, Multitasking Mommas
23-Oct: Divine Magazine
30-Oct: Molly Lolly
6-Nov: MM Good Book Reviews, Havan Fellows
13-Nov: Love Bytes, Amanda C. Stone
20-Nov: BFD Book Blog
27-Nov: 3 Chicks After Dark
4-Dec: Foxylutely Book Reviews
11-Dec: Hearts on Fire
Rafflecopter Prize: $35 Amazon Gift Card
