Rashaad Bell has written The Vampire Manifesto.
1. What is your name and where do you
call home?
My name is Rashaad Bell and I currently
reside in Palm Coast, Florida.
2. Do you have a pen name?
I had an alias when I first started my
writing career, but now I strictly go by Rashaad Bell. I want all my
ex-girlfriends to Google me, then become upset because my name takes up the
first three pages.
3. What is the name of your most recent
book and if you had to sum it up in 20 or less words, what would you say?
I just published my book, The Vampire Manifesto. It’s about a
teenage girl who finds out she is destined to open one of the Boxes of Pandora.
4. Do you have plans for a new book? Is
this book part of a series?
The
Vampire Manifesto is part of an ongoing
series that I plan to create, yet all my published books operate in the same
shared world. In The Vampire Manifesto,
that book revolves around the personal struggle of what it means to have the
Mark of Pandora placed upon you. The main character, Madison Amber Rose,
struggles to find her place in a world filled with supernatural beings and how
it changes her life, for good or bad.
In another book I wrote called Ambrosia, it deals with the United
States Governments reaction to the supernatural and what exactly does it mean
on a world level to have a Box of Pandora opened. It deals with the same themes
and topics, yet the events in Ambrosia
are world changing, whereas in The
Vampire Manifesto, it focuses on the day to day and the personal
ramifications of life altering, supernatural events.
5. What or who inspired you to start
writing? And how long have you been writing?
When I was in middle school, I checked
out J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings
from the library. It was one gigantic book, larger than any book I had ever
checked out on my own and it contained The
Hobbit, Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and Return of the King with no breaks, just one long story.
It was the most amazing thing I had ever
read and when I was done, I knew I wanted to be a writer.
6. Do you gift books to readers for book
reviews?
Yes, I do.
7. How did you come up with the cover?
Who designed the cover of your book?
Originally I created a cover which was a
play off of the Twilight cover. It
was an all-white background with a single apple and lots of blood. I liked it,
but felt I could do better, so I came up with the cover I have now.
I wanted something more classic looking
and I started studying different covers to see what I like and what I didn’t.
8. How did you come up with the title
for your book?
At first The Vampire Manifesto was going to be the overall name of the
series and I was going to have a different name for the first book. After a
while, I dropped the solo name and decided to use The Vampire Manifesto as the name of the first book, thus giving it
more weight as the name of the series.
I came up with the name while I was
listening to my iPod, coming up with random names for the book. I knew I wanted
the word Vampire in it, so I was just saying different combinations aloud until
I found the one I liked.
9. Is there anything you would change
about your book? And why?
There were characters that I thought
were going to get introduced in the first book that didn’t make it. Instead I’m
going to use them in the sequel. I wish I could fit them in, but I found the
perfect ending and they were not supposed to get introduced until after that.
10. Do you have a book trailer? And what
are your thoughts on book trailers?
I like book trailers. I think they are
cool. I haven’t created one for The
Vampire Manifesto yet, but I do have one for my other book, Forgotten Future. I plan on making a trailer for both The Vampire Manifesto and Ambrosia sometime this month.
11. Do you prefer e-books, paperbacks,
hardcovers or audiobooks?
It all depends. I don’t like audiobooks,
but I do like podcasts that act out the novels with different voices and sound
effects and music. As for books, I’m all about the digital downloads now. I
only buy my comics on my iPad and my book collection is about one hundred and
seventy deep in iBooks. Not that I am gonna read all those books and I still
plan on getting more, but it’s nice to know they are there whenever the mood
strikes me to read something.
12. Are you a self-published / Indie
author?
I’m self-published at the moment, yet I
don’t have any intention on going the legacy publisher route. I love the
control that I have over content, pricing, cover design and tittle. You just
don’t get that type of control with a legacy publisher. Plus my eBook sales are
really, really good and I doubt I would want to give away those rights and that
money just to receive a smaller percentile from a legacy publisher.
13. Have you ever read a book more than
once? And if so what was it?
I generally only read books once except
for Interview with a Vampire. I’ve
read that book more times then I can count. About once or twice a year I pull
it out for a reread. As far as comics go, I reread them all the time. I can’t
tell you have many times I’ve read The
Sinestro Corps War by Geoff Johns.
14. What book are you reading at the
moment? And in what format?
Right now I’m reading American Gods by Neil Gaimen on my iPad.
I wanna read through it before the HBO show comes out. I should have done that
with Game of Thrones, but I
didn’t. So I wanna read American Gods
before the show is aired.
15. Do you have any advice for other
writers? And what’s the best advice that you have been given when it comes to
writing?
Write! Write! Write! Once you are done
with that, then write some more! Writing is a skill; you only get better the
more you do it.
16. Where can your readers follow you?
Facebook page:
Goodreads author page:
Amazon:
Smashwords:
Thankyou so much for taking the time to do this interview and allowing us a glimpse into your writing world!
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