It’s National Encourage a Young Writer Day 2023!

Here’s the sort of “they’ve got a holiday for everything now” celebrations I have no trouble supporting: National Encourage a Young Writer Day! Although no one seems to know the origin of this “holiday,” according to the National Day Calendar:

“Observed each year on April 10th is National Encourage a Young Writer Day. Do you know a young person who has a vivid imagination, maybe someone who likes to tell stories and reads a lot of books? These may be the signs of a great young writer. National Encourage a Young Writer Day would be a good time to talk to them about their ideas and dreams. Encourage them to pursue their goals and develop their writing skills.”

“Again, He Who Stalks” page 1

As I always say, everybody’s gotta start somewhere, and that’s true for writing as much as any other career. Want an example? Check out my first published work, “Again, He Who Stalks”—a science-fiction story I wrote for my high school’s literary magazine when I was 16. Take a look at that, young writers, and then get to work—you could only do better!

Blood Reign: Queens Gazette Interviews Author Steven A. Roman

Blood-Reign-FinalCvrStop the presses! The promotional tour for Blood Reign: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 2 continues this week in print and digital forms at the newspaper Queens Gazette, with an interview with author and Queens resident Steven A. Roman (that’s me). If you’re in the borough and pick up a copy of the paper (free at many outlets), you’ll find it in the column “Local-Express.” If you’re not a Queens resident, you can find the online version right here at the Gazette’s website.

Being interviewed by a Queens newspaper makes perfect sense: The ’Warp’s office (okay, our PO box) is located in Dave Zwieback’s Sunnyside neighborhood, close to the White Castle burger joint where Pan and her fellow Fiend Club members hang out; Dave’s museum, Renfield’s House of Horrors and Mystical Antiquities, is based in Long Island City, within steps of the UA Kaufman movie theater, Kaufman-Astoria Studios, and the Museum of the Moving Image (not to mention it’s just a few blocks from the offices of the Queens Gazette); and the car-chase scene in Blood Reign starts at the museum and ends up at an abandoned airfield in another neighborhood, College Point. For a dark-urban-fantasy adventure about Goth chicks, shape-shifting monster hunters, and vampire-clan shoot-outs, you can’t get more Queens-centric than that!

And in case you weren’t aware, over at my Goodreads author page I’ve activated the “Ask the Author” function. So if you’re a Goodreads member and you’ve got your own questions about The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Lorelei: Sects and the City, or any of the other projects I’ve written over the years, head over there now and ask away!