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

Sylvester, 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?

My name is Sylvester Barzey, I’m an Army Veteran. I’m a husband and a father of a son that lives with autism. I also write Horror and Fantasy books, mostly in the apocalyptic genre, so anything that can end the world or has ended the world is really my wheelhouse of creativity. Now these genres and many fiction genres as a whole have been pretty White male dominated for years, so as a Black horror lover, I aim to change that. My books normally have a strong Black female as the focal point of the story, with elements of a strong Black family and a diverse cast of friends and villains to round everything out. Many people pick up books to get lost in fictional worlds but never see themselves within those worlds. For years the fantasy and horror genres have been 100% fictional because they seemed to be set in worlds that only have White straight characters.

If you take a look at the zombie genre where my hit series “Planet Dead” calls home, you can scroll through tons of books on Amazon that have the same covers and characters looking back at you (or away from you, since that’s the new trend in the book cover industry), White men who are forced to save the world or White women who aren’t like other women (whatever that means) This setup is what the fanbase seems to have gotten used too, but I’m really trying my hardest to reshape what the apocalypse looks like.

Growing up as a horror fan was amazing, because we had 80s horror legends like Freddy just running wild, we had 90s horror like Scream giving us the iconic final girl in Sidney Prescott. All of those horror movies about survival really shaped me, but it also brainwashed me into thinking that Black people couldn’t be the leads in these movies, which in turn told me we couldn’t be survivors. It’s always been a running joke about the Black guy dying first in a horror movie, but as a writer the joke was really telling of what a creator believed a Black person could and could not do. I was lost in this box of limitations for so long that when I first started writing Planet Dead, my main character was White, because I was trying to create a survivor, a final girl and every example I had was White.

When my wife asked me why my character wasn’t Black, I said, “She can’t be.” That’s when I took out my book and started over, Because I saw in that moment, how much a lack of representation impacted me and how I thought about my community. From that day on I set out to create horror and fantasy that showcased Black families and minority characters as the survivors that they are. History has shown us that Black people are the ultimate survivors and I want my fiction to do the same.

I think the proudest I’ve ever been was when I gave my little cousin a copy of my YA Fantasy “The Realm” and the first thing she said when she saw the cover was, “She looks like me!” That’s why I do what I do, I want my books to show the Black community that we can survive anything, from a racist country, to zombies, and to magical realms, we’re survivors and it’s time the world knew it.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

This story is a little unconventional but it all started with insomnia. I was dealing with a new medication that gave me some really bad insomnia, so since I couldn’t get any sleep, I decided to read a book. I grabbed a book written by a well known celebrity and really got pulled into his life story. At one point in the book he said that he was a big reader when he was younger and still reads a lot now, so my sleep deprived mind decided to write a letter and send him a set of my books. I couldn’t find his address so I just set it to the radio station he works at. Weeks went by and I was off those meds and finally getting some sleep when I got a call, it was the celebrity.

He told me that he never checks his mail but something told him to check it that day and he saw my books. He said he had plans to create movies and audio projects and would love to stay in touch. I’ve been talking with him on and off and we’re moving forward with a project based around my series Planet Dead. So yeah, that’s the biggest payoff from marketing I’ve ever gotten. Sometimes it’s things outside the box, or that take time out of your day (or sleep) that payoff the most and sometimes it’s fate, because if I didn’t have insomnia, there’s no telling if I would have even read his book.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

The Post-Apocalyptic genre is a very White populated genre and while I’m trying my best to bring about representation within it, I have run into some people who don’t feel that me being Black is acceptable in all aspects of my life and the industry. Like they see me as another author until I post something about Black Lives Matter. That’s when I’m too much for them or I’m disrupting a space. In the self-publishing industry there are a lot of communities that are made up on Facebook groups. One community that I was asked to be a part of, I was the only Black author, but we had a few Black readers within the group. That year was the first year that Juneteenth was marked as a national holiday. So to celebrate I posted some facts about the holiday, along with some iconic Black figures within the zombie genre and moments as well. Everything went fine until that following Monday, when two White members of the group (the admins) told me that my post made a reader feel uncomfortable and that I shouldn’t be posting things like that in a reading group. I told them we say Happy 4th of July every year, this is no different. They didn’t see it that way, they didn’t pull me aside or message me in private to talk about it, they messaged me in a group text, in front of all of my writing peers.

I stepped away from that group and it’s not the first group that I’ve stepped away from or had to limit my contact with. Being a minority in White fandoms can be hard, but I continue to push and try to create a feeling of safety wherever I go, because I want other Black people to feel like they are included within the genre and to feel welcomed. I started my own group, where I post what I want and I found an even better group of writers who are supportive and want me to be myself and talk about what’s important to me. I could hide my face and write about White characters and ignore issues and concepts that are important to the Black community and most likely make a lot of money from doing that, but I wouldn’t be happy and I wouldn’t be me, so I push on.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sylvesterbarzey.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/sylvesterbarzey
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorsylvesterbarzey
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/sbarzey
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/sylvesterbarzey
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcM3LecMpKhJYQGZVxN2q5A
• Other: For All Info: www.sylvsterbarzey.com/links For A Free Book: https://books2read.com/u/bwaGDa