Last summer, as I was going through the "likes" on the Kentucky Geek Girl Facebook page, I noticed one from someone by the name of Stephen Zimmer. Up until that point, most of the people who liked the page were those that I had invited to be a fan or were somehow connected with the blog. So, it was refreshing to see what I thought was organic blog and Facebook traffic. It was shortly thereafter that I attended the George R. R. Martin book signing at Joseph-Beth and saw a banner hanging from the banister which read talked about a local author's book signing later that month. The name on the banner was "Stephen Zimmer." I was delighted; an author, A CELEBRITY!, liked my humble little Facebook page! A couple of months later I had the pleasure of meeting him at a book signing at The Morris Bookshop, where he informed me that he was the Literary and Gaming tracks director for FandomFest, a convention which I attended last summer. We chatted for a few minutes about my thoughts on the convention. Fast forward a few months to a lovely spring day as Stephen and I sat down at (of course!) the Bronte Bistro at Joseph-Beth for me to learn more about his inspiration as an author and what we can expect from FandomFest this year. I'll be including the FandomFest portion of our interview with this week's preview of the convention, which will be held June 29-July1.
Stephen Zimmer is originally from Denver, Colorado and moved to Lexington with his family when his father took a job at the University of Kentucky School of Medicine. About Lexington he said, "I just never left, but it’s turned out to be a great place for what I do now because Lexington is so centrally located in relation to so many larger urban centers. It’s turned out in retrospect to be a good place to be an author."
Stephen is part of a stable of authors with Seventh Star Press, a small press publisher based out of Lexington. It was established in 2008 and specializes in speculative fiction. Other authors from Seventh Star Press include
Jackie Gamber and
Steven Shrewsbury. They release titles in all formats and more information about the company can be found on their website. His newest book in the
Fires of Eden series,
Spirit of Fire, is available now. Check back to Kentucky Geek Girl on Sunday, June 10 for a stop on the
Spirit of Fire book tour!
Many thanks to Stephen for having a cup of coffee with me and answering the following questions:
