Igor Novak interview

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

A little introduction:

Hi, I'm Igor Novak, a 21-year old from Croatia who loves writing and dreams of doing it for a living.🙂

When did your love of books begin?

Ok, get ready for storytime😅🙂. I was 5 years old and I really liked reading comics. One afternoon, I came to my mom with my then favorite comic in my hands and asked her to read it to me. It was a new sequel and I was interested to see what would happen. She said that she was tired from work, that she needed to rest a bit and that she would read it to me later, but I couldn't wait, so I took the comic in my hands and tried my best to learn to read. I remember that when I succeeded, I ran all happy to my mother and said "Mom, mom, I learned to read!". Everyone in my family was impressed then, I learned to read before I learned to write. Then they enrolled me in the city library and I started reading every day and that's how my love for books was born.🙂

When did you start to have the wish to become an author?

When I was enrolled in the city library, I immediately fell in love with books and read them every day. The more I read, the more I began to be enchanted by that fictional world, and I began to dream that one day I too would write a book, which someone would read with the same joy with which I read books back then. Then as I grew up, puberty came, I had a lot of problems and stress at school and somehow I stopped reading. I started reading again towards the end of high school. When I realized that I had chosen the wrong profession, glass technician, I thought about what I like to do and what interests me. Then I remembered my boyhood dream of becoming a writer and that's when I started writing my first books.

How have you found the process for becoming an author?

Writing is easy. Of course, there are days when inspiration works and when it doesn't, but the biggest problem for me, like most self-published writers I believe, is marketing. Especially since I'm pretty broke right now, and everyone I've met offers promotional services for a price. It's the same with book editing. And finding people who are interested in your writing and who will take some of their time to read your book is also quite a big problem.

What would you say to those wanting to become an author?

To those who want to become authors, I would tell them to write and read as much as possible, because writing, like everything else, needs practice. And I would tell them not to give up when it's hard, to keep writing and trying because that's the only real way to success.

Tell us about your book/books:

So far I have written two short stories (if I don't count ones in croatian and ones that were for a contest) and I am currently writing my first novel on Neovel. Neovel is a site similar to Wattpad, except that it is still a fairly new site, so it is not that popular, but its community is growing more and more every day. The novel I am currently writing is called "After the rain comes the sun". It is the story of a 15-year-old teenager, Fran, who, after his parents broke up, together with his mother, Katarina, comes from the Czech Republic to Croatia to start a better life. Things will go very badly and Fran will go through a lot of hard times. At one point, he will completely lose hope that things will get better, but then he will remember what his mother used to tell him all the time when he was little, when he was in a bad mood. And that is that "After the rain comes the sun". And Fran's sun will come too.🙂 "After the rain comes the sun" is a book with which I want to tell all those who are currently going through certain difficulties in life that things cannot be bad forever and that sooner or later the "sun after the rain" will come.

What do you love about the writing/reading community?

What I love about the writing/reading community is that everyone is kind and supportive of each other. That's very nice🙂

If you could say anything to your readers what would it be?

Thank you to everyone who has read, is reading or will read my books. You have no idea how much that means to me. You inspire me to keep writing and follow my dream. I am grateful to you from the bottom of my heart and I love you all very much💛

Where can people connect with you?

People can reach me through my instagram (igor_the_writer) and twitter (Igorthewriter). I'm quite active on Instagram, a little less on Twitter, but I see all the messages, and I'll always reply as soon as I find some time. I'm also thinking about maybe starting a youtube or twitch channel as a writer soon. If I decide to do it, it will be a big step for me to step out of my comfort zone since I'm quite an introverted person and I'm bad at speaking in front of the camera😅. We'll see.

Thank you to everyone who read this interview😊💛