Meet The Authors Showcase Edition #2 (2 of 3)

A showcase with @MenteMelan, author of Imprisoned by secrets

1 what inspired the idea of your story?

I came up with the idea for "Imprisoned by secrets" while lying in my bed one night. I was thinking about how the secrets I'd hidden in the past still affected me till today so I decided to do a story about secrets. Originally, the story was supposed to be a romance story about a young woman whose past came back to haunt her. As soon as I created Beatrice, I wanted the story to be a lot more than that. I wanted a story with a sweet beginning, a shocking climax, and a perplexing end. 

2 what was something you struggled with for your story ?

Out of all the books I've ever written, "Imprisoned by secrets" was by far the easiest. I knew what the beginning of the story was, I knew what the climax would be and I knew how the story would end even before I started writing it. My only challenge was editing for typos until one of my friends agreed to help me do that.

3 what has been the overall response to your story from your readers?

So far, all of my readers have been quite positive about the story! The feedback and comments are really encouraging!

4 what did you enjoy writing most of your story?

Creating the characters! I didn't want my book to have too many characters so I just focused on five main ones and tried to do a lot of character development. 

5 is your story a stand alone novel or a piece of a series?

Imprisoned by secrets was always meant to be a stand-alone book. Most of my books are.

6 what would you like your readers to take away from your story?

The whole point of the book was to show how dangerous keeping secrets can be.

7 what's a piece of advice you would provide to another writer, when it comes to focusing on their story?

Focus on descriptions and character development. The reason a lot of my readers liked "Imprisoned by secrets" was because they felt either hatred or love towards the characters and they were able to get a clear description of what I was trying to refer to. Also, editing is very important to get rid of typos and redundant sentences!

8 does your main character share any similarities to yourself?

There are quite a number of similarities between Beatrice and myself. For instance, I can be a bit stern and cold from time to time. Most of my close friends who read the book couldn't help but laugh and comment on how I react to situations almost the same way Beatrice does. 

9 what's something you believe would draw in new readers?

Publicizing a book is really hard. When I finished imprisoned by secrets, I only had a little over 1K reads and it didn't even rise for a long time. I tried contacting a couple of fellow writers via Wattpad, offering a read for read. I also started entering more competitions on Wattpad because it's a great way to get people to see how fantastic your book is.

10 do you have any future projects?

Currently, I'm writing a fantasy novel called "The Prophecy of the Black Day". I still have about five to six more books I'd like to write.