✉ Song of the Oceanides - J.G. Źymbalist

Today author J.G. Źymbalist takes over our blog to tell us about life and writing. His latest novel, Song of the Oceanides (13 January 2016, J.G. Źymbalist, 766 pages), a Young Adult Fantasy, is currently on sale for only .99!

"Źymbalist writes in a lovely, highly descriptive prose that luxuriates in the details and curios of his setting [...]

The world Źymbalist creates is so rich and vast that, for a certain type of reader, 750 pages will not be nearly enough. 

A clever and finely wrought steampunk tale about aliens and misfits." - Kirkus Reviews

Synopsis | Teaser | Guest Post: Balancing Life and Writing | About the Author | Giveaway & Tour Stops

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Balancing Life and Writing

I don’t know how to balance life and writing. I’ve seen others do it, so I suppose it can be done.  That having been said, I only know what I did to resolve the struggle: First, from my early life through the better part of my forties, I lived and lived alone—and wrote very little other than two rough prose drafts and a handful of lousy poems.  This approach afforded me the time to keep extensive idea books and to develop my own heartfelt belief system and world view.  Living without a great deal of writing also afforded me the chance to read and to lose myself in the study of the craft of fiction.  In addition, keeping an emphasis on living afforded me the luxury of traveling and learning about several different European and Middle-Eastern cultures.
     Living and night clerking in various Palestinian youth hostels in the Old City of Jerusalem was perhaps my greatest and most informational experience.  On any given day in the Old City of Jerusalem, I might encounter Palestinian Muslim culture, Palestinian Christians, Greeks, Armenians, Secular Jews, Hasidic Jews, pilgrims from Africa, and tourists and photojournalists from pretty much anywhere and everywhere.

     At night, little by little, I did write the rough draft of my first mature work.  But that’s not what is important.  What is important is that most of the time I permitted myself not to write but to observe.

     Now that I am much older, I’m beginning to understand how Einstein could have come to cherish his solitude.  In some respects, I feel that I’ve already lived.  Now I can retreat from the world and redraft the materials that I have accumulated and/or rifle through my idea books.  Growing old does not bother me so much because I know that now it is time to work.

J.G. Źymbalist

Song of the Oceanides
On Sale for ONLY .99!

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