📖Authors To Watch: Gabriella Zielke Author of The Sound of Creation #authorstowatch #interview #PUYB

 

Gabriella Zielke founded one of the world’s first tech accelerators where she was fortunate to mentor and fund hundreds of founders whose ideas previously only existed as science fiction. Fast Company named Zielke one of its Most Creative People, among other accolades from her business career. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Creative Writing at Harvard University Extension while living on St. Croix with her husband and their zealous Great Dane. When she’s not writing, you can find her dancing with fire.

Her latest book is the scifi novel, The Sound of Creation.

Visit her website at www.gabriellazielke.com or connect with her at Twitter and Facebook.

Brilliant and relentless tech CEO Ava Lawson built a system to play the currency market and make her billions. Instead, it begins to play strange music and makes normally level headed people behave irrationally, violently, dangerously.

While on the run from a coup to steal her code, Ava meets an ethereal stranger who seems to know more about her than she does.

The stranger calls himself an apprentice. He pleads for her help to stop what they have started.

“The Sound of Creation is a mind-bending book filled with big questions about our existence. It takes you on a journey disrupted by action scenes and strange characters. You will find yourself floating on dimensions you did not know even existed. This book is a mind game. You have been warned.” ~ George Papa, author of The Manual and The Architect’s typist for The Code

Book Information

Release Date: February 2, 2022

Publisher:  The Wild Rose Press

Soft Cover: ISBN:  978-1509239139; 342 pages; $17.99; E-Book, $5.99

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3B8ILUz

We welcome you to My Bookish Pleasures! Can you tell us how you got started writing fiction?

I started writing fiction when I enrolled in a class at my alma mater a year after receiving my MBA. Makes sense, right? I like to take stock of life every year and see if there’s anything I would change or do if I could. Years before, I knew I wanted to write novels, but as a single mom for twelve years, I thought other responsibilities were more important. A class couldn’t hurt though! Then I made the decision that when my son went to college, I would sell my company and take a year off to write a book. We’re now four years into that one year plan…

Describe your writing process. Do you plot or write by the seat of your pants? When and where do you write?

I like to have an idea of where the plot is going by utilizing the heroes journey. Every few chapters, I revisit (rewrite) my outline because the characters like to go off script and it’s always better when I allow them to!

I typically write on weekdays. When I’m home, I use my pool house office. When I’m traveling, I find a comfortable spot and open the laptop. If I tried to keep an exact schedule and place, I’d never finish a book.

Can you tell us about your most recent release?

The Sound of Creation is a scifi thriller that is described as “mind bending”. Ava is a tech CEO who wants to crack the code of the currency market. Instead, she creates something far more mysterious. When her system, Seneca, begins playing music, chaos ensues. Meanwhile, in the 7^th dimension Creation Guild, an apprentice is told that his project planet is threatening to bring chaos to the upper dimensions. He is ordered to return to Earth, and destroy it.

How did you get the idea for the book?

So I was in the shower one day. I had recently experienced a few incidents where I heard my intuition loud and clear, and it was right. I trust that voice deeply now, and that morning is posed a question. What if we really do live in a simulation…and it was created by an apprentice? I entertained the thought for a minute because it’s, well, entertaining. Then that voice told me it would be my first published novel. It was strange, but here we are.

Of all your characters, which one is your favorite? Why?

Zek is the apprentice who created Earth. How can you not love him for that?! He’s also ethereal and a lovely optimist. He wants every soul to ascend the dimensions…no soul left behind. And he makes friends with wolves.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing your book?

My father is an evangelical missionary, so writing about an apprentice who created Earth was a bit of a deviation from his beliefs. But, my book doesn’t exactly negate the stories I learned as a child. He might still frown on some characters’ use of f-bombs.

What projects are you currently working on?

The Billionaire Pledge is a near future tech thriller starring one of the world’s best hackers and her equally talented sister. A new cryptocurrency is set to go live and with it the promise that no human will ever be without the basic necessities of life. One of the billionaires has a different plan. The sisters must reunite to stop him.

Sistren is a speculative fiction novel about a female led society that is the world’s superpower due to the robotics its founder developed. They are forced to go through a change of leadership that threatens to collapse the order the Sistren have built.

My book ideas like to compete with one another, so I give them attention as they demand, knowing that one will eventually win to be my second novel published.

What advice would you offer to new or aspiring fiction authors?

Quit reading so much advice from other authors and write more. One of my favorite ways of staying on track and getting my word count up is to write with a partner over zoom. We call in, give a brief description of what we’re working on for the hour, then write. At the end of the hour we talk about what we got done. It really helps me focus!