Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sevan Minaskanian . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Sevan, thanks for joining us today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

Nothing felt right until it did. It was love, romance, a dream, and a heartbreak all in one, for me to finally tell my story. When I would sleep, my mind would go a hundred miles an hour, swirling with so many questions about love and romance, and how I could bring it back to share with the world. It all came together after many years of watching old black and white movies and seeing the innocent love and respect they had for each other back then. Some time after losing my father, during a trip to Vail, I crossed this beautiful bridge and I felt like I crossed over into the next part of my life. I didn’t realize it while I was standing on that bridge until it came together for me in a dream. This was my time to finally let go of my fear of what the world would think and write my love story.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am happily married to wonderful man and I am also a mother of two. God and family are very important to me. I am a hopeless romantic, and I love anything that has to do with love and romance, with a preference for old fashioned love stories. I am a huge fan of Elvis Presley. Having family around is very important to me. Everywhere I go, I try to see the love and romance of that particular place and the people that are there. Even though I get along with everyone, my circle of friends is small, and carefully chosen.
I have always been a storyteller amongst family and at social gatherings. Using detailed descriptions and setting scenes brings my listeners into the story and they end up feeling invested in the characters while visualizing the scenes I have set. My favorite setting to write about is when it’s cold, cloudy, rainy and foggy, especially in the forest.
I gather inspiration to start writing by watching old love stories until the point where they first meet, putting on rain and thunder sound effects, and finding a quiet place.
I am very proud of writing my book, WINTER TIME, without giving up. I wasn’t an English major, but with my father’s writing talents that he passed down to me, I knew I could do it. I am working on the second and third books of the trilogy, WINTER SAGA.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

It was one of my hardest and longest endeavors I have ever been faced with. Not giving up was the key to my success. As a self-published author, it was very difficult for bookstores to open up and give me a chance at a book signing. Emailing wasn’t getting the job done, and it wasn’t for a lack of trying. I had to actually show up at each of the stores with my book in hand, and my personality shining to get a chance at a book signing. I would tell them about my book, the main characters in it, and everything else I could think of to convince them. I tried to captivate them and eventually I must have because they gave me my book signings. I took the signings to a whole other level and turned them into live events with lots of swag. I actually brought my characters to life with live actors portraying the main characters. I am happy to report that WINTER TIME by Sevan Minaskanian is now available on Barnes and Noble, Amazon, IngramSpark, and most bookstores.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I never had social media until my husband convinced me to get on Instagram and write teasers about the characters in WINTER TIME. I wouldn’t use excerpts from the book. Instead, I tried to expand on the characters and their back stories. Even though Instagram is a platform for pictures, I would post these teasers as story panels. I would portray my characters as younger children to develop their early lives. I wrote about side stories of William and Victoria, my main characters, in their present day. Some would be emotional, some would be cliff hangers, and some weren’t even about my book characters, but they were all very romantic. Some were life lessons. Some were how to be romantic with your partner. And the response was phenomenal. People would DM me to find out how the story ended. Some even thought the characters were real. I got a lot of emotional responses. It was a lot of fun being creative in a very large and public format, and getting real and authentic, positive feedback. Each week, the number of my followers grew. I wrote about love and romance, and I was surprised to get followers from all walks of life. I didn’t think that men would like the kind of romance I was posting, but they did. I recently added Linkedin and X (aka Twitter) to expand my reach but I’m mostly posting on Instagram. I have been on a couple podcasts and I’m trying to make more of those. I even appeared in some articles including LA Entertainment Weekly. And proud to add CanvasRebel Magazine.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @Sevantime
• Linkedin: SevanMinaskanian
• Twitter: @Sevantime