Welcome Today's Featured Author
Shanelle Grizzle!!
Team Spice
Team Spice is a Young Adult
Fiction novel that was published in July 2018 though the self
publishing company, LuvvSyc Alliance, that is based in Atlanta, GA. It
is currently available as a paperback copy.
Blurb:
17-year old Jay Spice is a loner that has never known what it was like
to have a friend. When his mother suddenly passes away, he is forced to
move to Amacitia to be under the care of his grandparents. When he
arrives, things begin to change. Subject to a prank gone wrong and a
stray meteor, Jay finds himself with friends, superpowers, and up
against a super villain capable of manifesting one’s greatest fears.
About Shanelle Grizzle
Shanelle
Grizzle is a New York City native, born in the borough of Queens and
raised in The Bronx. As of May 2017, she has graduated from Nova
Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with a Bachelor of
Science degree in biology and a minor in media studies. Whenever she's
not playing video games or watching WNBA games, you can find her on her
laptop on Microsoft Word writing up whatever story idea that had just
popped up in her head. Growing up, she has always tried out a few
hobbies, but one that has always stuck was writing. From writing
fanfiction to short stories to her very first novel, Team Spice,
she's always had a passion for writing stories and loved sharing her
ideas with others. Even though her future career plans revolve around
medicine and health care, one thing that she's wanted to accomplish in
life was to publish a book and reach out to others. She wants to try and
give readers a meaningful and unique experience when reading her
stories, and maybe even help them with any struggles that they might be
going through. Shanelle tries to make her stories like herself:
different and helpful to others.
Social media:
- Facebook: Facebook.com/ShanGrizWrites
- Instagram: xcocoahontasx
Interview With Shanelle Grizzle:
1. Can you tell us a little about your books?
*My novel, Team Spice, is a YA fiction. The
story is told from the perspective of a boy named Jay Spice, someone who is a
loner that never knew what it was like to have someone his own age to call a
friend. He moves to a new city, Amacitia, where he moves in with his
grandparents after his mother passes away suddenly and his father is overseas serving
in the military. When he gets to Amacitia, he’s finally able to make friends
with people his own age. In addition, Jay and his new friends develop superpowers
as a result of an accident that involved a piece of a fallen space rock one of
his new friends had found contaminating some food that was made, and eaten, in
home economics class. As a result, Jay and his friends form their own superhero
crime fighting team, Team Spice, with Jay being the leader. Team Spice goes up
against a supervillain, named Timor, who is able to manifest a person’s greatest
fear into real life. The message I want to send with my Team Spice novel
is that when we let our fears get the better of us, it is going to have a negative
effect on us and stop us from living our best lives. It’s perfectly okay to be
afraid of something, because we’re only human, but we can’t allow fear to hold
us back from living.
2. What inspires you to write?
* I’m a very imaginative person. I like thinking
up new things, new scenarios and I want to jot them down so I can come back to
them later. Also, growing up, I was very shy and quiet. Even now as an adult, I
consider myself to be kind of awkward and I sometimes find it difficult to
speak to people, especially people I’m meeting for the first time. However, I
do want to reach out to people, to help them and share my ideas and show them
who I am. So, I like to write as a form of self-expression, and that helps me
reach out to people so that I can show them who I am and try to give them a sort
of unique reading experience that may contain a message that may even help them
out in life.
3. Do you have a special time to write or how is your day structured?
*I don’t have a special time, per
say. Whenever a really good idea comes to mind, I grab my laptop and just start
writing. That could happen whether the sun is up or down. Though, for the most
part, most of my ideas usually pop up at night and so most of my writing is
done at night.
4. Do you work with an outline, or just write?
*When I started writing stories in middle
school, I never used an outline. I just wrote and made up things as I went
along. Team Spice started off as a story with no outline and I had no
idea what was going to happen in a chapter whenever I started a new one, so I
would just quickly think of a scenario and I rolled with it until something
happened. However, when I got serious about publishing Team Spice and
turning it into a book series, I started to make outlines for the future books
I’m going to write. I have a special notebook and documents on my laptop where
I write down notes for what I want to happen in each book, what I want each
chapter to be about, and the kind of storylines and backgrounds I want my
characters to have. I feel that me having outlines for my future books will help
me improve as an author.
5. How do you come up with your characters names?
*The members that make up Team
Spice are based on my real life group of friends that I had in high school,
so when coming up with names for my characters, I would play off of their real
names or their nicknames. For example, the character La-La, is based on my
friend, Lauren, who we sometimes called by her nickname La-La. I’d also give
them a name that was related to their superpower or interests. The character,
Lyric, is based on one of my best friends, Stephanie, who, like her character,
loves literature and the fine arts. I gave her character the name Lyric,
because I felt that it kind of represented her love for writing and poetry.
6. Do you have a favorite spot to write?
*My favorite spot to write would be
in bed. When I’m writing and I have a really good idea and I’m on a roll, my
writing sessions could last for hours, and sitting down in a chair for hours
can get uncomfortable. I prefer to write in bed, because if I get uncomfortable
from sitting upright after some time, I can just switch to laying on my stomach
and continue to type away on my laptop.
7. If you had a superpower, what would it be?
* I
think I would like to have the power of telekinesis. The thought of moving
things with just the power of my mind really intrigues me. Also, I’m kind of
sneaky and I like to play little pranks on my friends and my mom, so I think
having telekinesis would help improve the quality of my practical jokes
8. What writing projects are you currently working on?
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