We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Seth Campbell. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Seth below.

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

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on is my current book series I’m drafting. It’s a kids series focusing on genres like steampunk, aetherpunk, etc. I’m intending it to be a punk primer series that explores some social and political issues in a kid friendly way for 2nd to 4th grade readers.

Punk is all about being true to one’s self, challenging social norms, and questioning establishment regimes. These are all important themes that I think even kids can understand if toned down to a safe level. I’m exploring greed, corruption, and bullying under the framework of an action adventure series with fun technology and new worlds.

It’s meaningful because I write in the punk genre for adults, but my current series is very graphic. My kids can’t read it, but they asked me if I would write a series for children. We love reading the Dragon Masters series together, so I challenged myself to write something similar that we could enjoy as a family one day.

Seth, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I currently work in the construction field doing design and estimating, but I have degrees in technical theatre and spent about thirteen years in the theatre field. It was extremely stressful and creatively draining, so I switched fields to have a more stable work environment and be more present for my family.

Since doing so, my creative passions were reinvigorated, and I decided to take the leap into self-publishing. Since I started in 2023, I’ve put out 3 books and 2 novellas in my dark, oceanpunk fantasy series The Eldritch Depths, and am publishing a gothic, dark romance, The Widow’s Monster, later this year. I’m also working on the aforementioned kids punk series, and a western punk dark fantasy.

Since stumbling into self-publishing, I’ve truly found an outlet for my creative energy that is satisfying and exciting. I love creating new worlds, telling human stories, and working through past traumas with my characters. Self-publishing allows me to explore things my way, although I am going to be querying some works soon.

Everything I write is one-hundred percent authentic to me. It’s weird, sometimes divisive, and challenging, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I built a following on TikTok, but have since switched to focus mostly on Instagram with some punk videos on YouTube.

On TikTok, I gained traction just being myself. I wore a pirate outfit, made corny jokes, and generally just showed my passion for my work. I found a lot of people in the space tend to focus on negatives or drama in the self-publishing community, and I didn’t want to do that as much as I could. I keep my space fairly complaint free, and focus on positive energy and creative excitement.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Seeing responses from readers when one of my books really connects with them. I like to tackle some hard subjects and write visceral character drama (even in the midst of all the eldritch nonsense), and it is so satisfying to hear when that really connects with people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.smcampbellauthor.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sm_campbell_author/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555181244609
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@S.M.Campbell-Author
• Other: Substack: https://substack.com/@smcampbellauthor?utm_source=user-menu

  Patreon: https://patreon.com/user?u=86620443&utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink

Image Credits

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