Dawn had the opportunity to read/review Golden Healer Dark Enchantress and interview the author Christine Schulze.

Read our review of Golden Healer Dark Enchantress here.

1. How did you come up with the idea for Golden Healer, Dark Enchantress?

Well, it all started—and please don’t shoot me or stop reading this, for those haters out there—when I first read Twilight. I have always loved fantasy but never had any interest in vampires. I’m not one to follow trends, so when I first saw Twilight in my college bookstore and read the back cover blurb, I was intrigued by the idea of good vampires and thoroughly hooked.

Always having been a Christian fantasy writer specifically, I decided to take this concept a step further, creating not just good vampires, but Christian vampires. Seems like an oxymoron to some readers, but it is a different enough idea to really catch their interest and want to know more. So far, it seems to be working for me, since I have many good reviews coming in. ^_^

2. Was it difficult to get your work published? What was the process? And do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Difficult, I’ve come to know, is not the right word for publishing. In this day and age, anyone can publish anything. It’s finding a quality publisher, and especially getting others to buy your work, that is the true challenge, especially with there being so many books and ebooks out there.

My story for getting this particular book published starts about five years ago, in my first year of college. I’d recently sent another book of mine, The Prism of Ashlei (which I’ve since published) to a publisher who sent me this brilliant acceptance letter in the mail—along with a note saying I would have to pay a large sum to help with publication. This was nowhere on their website, and I was pretty discouraged. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t just pay the money and admit to the world I could never get published elsewhere (And while I have since delved into some self-publishing, all of it has been free except to order copies of my books, and it has been a personal, fun adventure allowing me to create my own cover art and such).

Well, around the same time I sent off Ashlei, I had sent a query to Writers-Exchange E-publishing for Golden Healer, Dark Enchantress. By this time, I had no recollection of this submission, until I received an acceptance in my email, just when I needed it after my discouragement with the other publisher.

I read the email over and over to make sure this one didn’t require me to pay anything. I even sent a message to Sandy, the publisher, to make sure there were no fees. She understood, having had other authors who also had bad experiences with Vanity Presses.

Finally, I remembered sending the book to her in the first place: somewhere on the website, she’d mentioned liking both vampire books and Christian books. It seemed the perfect fit—and I guess it was! She and the editors have been truly great to work with, and I’ve learned so much since then to really polish my writing, including my self-published works.

It has been a hard journey and it still is, but my sincere hope and, I believe, my purpose and calling, is to someday see my books enjoyed by readers throughout the world. Of course, that’s a large goal, daunting even to some, so for now, I am focusing on smaller goals that will help me, in time, hopefully secure an agent for future publications.

For other aspiring writers—and artists of all sorts—I can simply say to press on! Keep going til you reach your first goal, and then keep setting new goals and meeting them from there. You must be willing to work hard, but if you do, you will eventually start to see some quite exciting results!

3. What made you decide to write in the Supernatural/Paranormal Christian genre?

I have always loved all things fantasy and now, as I grow older, paranormal as well. I revel in the creativity of fantasy, creating all my own worlds, peoples, characters, etc. I have tried to write in the real world before and more or less utterly fail; I feel too limited, stifled. Creating my own worlds, for example, allows me to create much richer, more intricate plots and characters because I don’t have to worry if a thing could happen in real life or if I might be saying something happened that doesn’t line up with real history.

As for the Christian aspect, in most of my works, I have always added Christian aspects. Some, as in this book, bring the Christian perspective directly into the characters’ lives. In other books, I’ve created allegorical aspects, like in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. Yet others simply contain messages of forgiveness, friendship, or good versus evil, like many YA and middle grade books do, such as the much beloved Harry Potter series. High praise for the director of the last HP movie, by the by. It was brilliant, and there was a time period of at least thirty minutes where I sobbed off and on for various reasons.

4. I enjoyed that Chrystine is not a weak, whiny female lead. Was that on purpose? or just the way it turned out?

I suppose it wasn’t really on purpose; Chrystine, as many could guess, is a character largely fashioned after myself. I gave her the same inner strength and characteristics I saw myself often possessing at that time or else desiring to possess.

And on a minor note, yes, dear readers, it really IS possible to blush that much. Especially when I was around the REAL Aaryn.

5. What did you hope to convey about an alcoholic parent abusing their child? What message do you hope teens will take away from the book?

While I was not subject to alcoholic abuse as a child, I was inspired to include that aspect because of other types of abuse I was subject to. I suppose this part of the book shows in part where Chrystine gets her inner strength from; she has to rely on God to protect her, and she has to be strong to survive. From a Christian standpoint, I would want readers to know that God is there, and He will care for and protect them if they trust in Him. And from just a “me” standpoint, I guess I would want them to see how important it is to be patient and forgive, to draw strength and security from friends and others around them. Never give up on the hope that the pain will pass and that someday, through your love and kindness, all wounds may be healed. I guess we can learn that message also from the way Chrystine “saves” Aaryn.

6. I’ve read you’re a teacher. How important is reading in your daily life? and is it important to you to pass that on to students?

Actually, while I do have my degree in Elementary Education, I am currently teaching at daycare—all of my children are under two years old. ^_^ However, even at that age, reading is important so they can start to know the words, start to say them and make sense of them in their head, and connect them to the familiar pictures they see on the page.

Honestly, I am so busy writing and promoting lately that I read little. But I do believe reading to be very important, to strengthen our young people’s minds, hearts, and imaginations. Reading takes you to new worlds, and while I often used my writing as an escape from hard times as a child, it did not make me weaker. Rather, it made me stronger and gave me a hope and a dream to work towards.

7. What can we expect for the rest of this series?

I’ve had readers wonder how the series will continue, considering how Golden Healer ends. I will say that while we will see characters like Aaryn and Chrystine again, they will not be the stars in future books. There will be four books in The Stregoni Sequence, and in each of the next three, like its predecessor, there will be someone under a spell which needs to be broken.

The second book is called Memory Charmer, and it involves a wizard under an enchantment sort of like being a vampire, only that he must feed not upon others’ blood, but upon their memories, in order to survive.

8. What is one thing you’d like for readers to know about you?

Oh, dear. Well, I can’t think of anything off-hand, save my quirks, like naming everything under the sun and being allergic to milk and sugar. So, I guess I’ll share another tip about my books.

Something that most of my readers aren’t aware of yet, especially since I’m not very well-known yet, is that The Stregoni Sequence is actually part of a much larger collection called The Amielian Legacy. It will be comprised of thirty-three books, some of which are already published, others which are not, and will contain both series and stand-alone books. Each book will contain its own story, and many will be set in different worlds. Thus, each can be read separately; I would never make anyone have to read all thirty-three to understand what is going on.

However, for those who do take time to read them all, there are benefits; it will be really cool for such avid readers to see how everything fits together. For example, when you read The Hero Chronicles, there is a character in there named Eric. I am working on a novelette right now called Follow Me which will be about a character connected, howbeit in a small way, to Eric. It’s like Easter eggs in video games, although other connections are larger and more important.

I think it’s important readers be aware of this, because I’ve had a few who want to know why certain details aren’t explained in such and such a book. These are details not vital to that particular story, but they want to know so that they know the world better. Often, if I don’t explain a thing fully in that book, it’s because it is already explained better in another book of The Amielian Legacy.

Well, I suppose that is all. Thanks so much to Dawn for having me! To my readers, God bless, happy reading, may you truly be inspired, and please keep an eye out for new releases from Christine E. Schulze

Thanks for the opportunity to work with you 🙂