We recently connected with Candice Zee and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Candice thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

My debut novel The Munchkins is the most meaningful project I’ve ever worked on because the idea for it has been in my mind since I was a child. When I was a kid, my younger brother and I would make up our own make-believe stories and play pretend, acting them out. Our favorite one was one I dreamed up about kids with magic powers who never grow up, and the bad guy who wants their powers named Big Boss, and we called it “Munchkins.” I always remembered it as I grew up, and I thought to myself it would actually make a good book. Somehow I always knew I’d turn it into a book someday, but I never really thought I’d be an author until I actually started writing it. The book has been very successful and has won four awards, including the Gold Award in the Teen Category in the 2021-22 Reader Views Literary Awards. In some way, maybe because of the fact I held the idea for The Munchkins in my head since I was very young and then for most of my life, I feel I was almost born to write this book.

Candice, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m the multiple-award-winning author of the upper middle-grade/YA dark fantasy novel The Munchkins. The Munchkins is a suspenseful story about thirteen children with mysterious powers and the inability to age, their loving adoptive father, and their evil neighbor who knows them better than they know themselves. In the book, Capricorn Munch and her 12 siblings suddenly appear outside a children’s home, and no one, including themselves, knows who they are or where they came from. At ten years old they stop aging, and she and her siblings develop powers that give them incredible abilities, like healing wounds and manifesting objects. They strive to live a normal life, hiding their powers, until an evil neighbor moves in next door. As the dangerous neighbor encourages them to be reckless with their powers, the siblings realize he’s up to something more sinister and they need to find out what—before it’s too late.

I’m also an early childhood teacher with an M.Ed. in Elementary Education and I’ve taught for over twelve years in Pre-K, Kindergarten, and primary grade classrooms. Like Casey Munch in my book series, I’m passionate about creating a more just and equitable world for all.. I live in Cleveland, OH with my wife Dana and our dog companion Solstice. The Munchkins is my debut novel and the first in a series. The next book will come out in 2023. It has also been picked up by a Russian publisher and will soon be available in two languages. The Munchkins has won four literary awards since it was published in October 2021, including the Gold Award in the Teen Category of the Reader Views Literary Awards, a 2021 Story Monsters Approved Award in Tween Novels, Honorable Mention in the Preteen Category of the 2022 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards, and a Finalist in Juvenile Fiction in the 16th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being a writer is taking the characters that you love that were once just figments in your head and bringing them to life. You get to then share these characters with the world so others will have the chance to fall in love with them too. It’s that and the spark of joy you get when you go into a bookstore or library and see your book on the shelf, knowing that you wrote that and brought the characters inside it into the world.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Please support indie authors and artists. Many of the traditional avenues of promotion and publicity are closed to indie authors, so it’s twice as hard for them to even make themselves and their books visible, let alone bestsellers. The support you give them helps them so much and means more than you realize.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.munchkinsbooks.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/candicezeemunchkins/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/readthemunchkins
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZeeCandice
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGOHImPC6wg
• Other: Sign up for The Munchkins e-newsletter Munchie News: https://www.subscribepage.com/p3s1g5 Follow me on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/candice_zee

Image Credits
Book cover image: Jeff Brown Graphics