1. Do you have a specific writing style?

I always try to write clearly for the readers. My priority is to be understood – not to make beautiful, long sentences. I don’t think that my style is literary and complicated. I prefer short, clear sentences that people can understand and I try to keep writing in this style. I am also very attentive to rhythm issues – but this is something intuitive, I cannot explain it rationally. I am not good at long narratives and long and complicated descriptions, so I try to avoid them.

2. What books have most influenced your life?

Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. All fairy tales and mythology- maybe Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales more than the rest. Greek mythology and Aesope’s myths. And the Brothers Karamazov by Dostoievsky – Crime and Punishment too. When I read Dostoievsky, I felt something difficult to put in words- like an earthquake in my head. I have always loved everything by Oscar Wilde and my philosophy is very much influenced by the Tao Te Ching and the Taoist Philosophers (NOT the religion – the philosophy).

3. If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

Oscar Wilde. Also Hans Christian Andersen (he also was a major influence for Oscar Wilde) and Shakespeare with Midsummer Night’s Dream. I have found out that many of my stories were influenced or inspired (even at a sub conscious level) by Midsummer Night’s Dream).

4. What are your current projects?

My comics. If you want to know more about them, please read my interview here:
http://forums.jazmaonline.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7235

blue sparkles

Her current comics projects are, and quoting:

Blue Sparkles is a story of a cursed love. The two young lovers escape to Dreamland to be together, but even there, it seems that the curse follows them. The story is inspired by Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of the major influences on my imagination. Art in Blue Sparkles is by wonderful French artist Aurore Barois (aka VURORE).

Sissy Pantelis

Red Nightmare is a story about change and its consequences. It is a story of a cruel king, who decides to change after a hallucination he has while he visits a witch (whom he tortures at first). It is also about being at peace with your own self, about inner harmony. I found out that it was a very important thing and maybe one of the most difficult tasks one can attempt in his lifetime. Now, Red Nightmare is NOT a philosophy book; it is a fairy tale featuring anthropomorphic animals. As all my stories, it is first aimed to entertain and make readers dream. But change has always been an important factor in my life and the main theme of this story is change. The artist working on this story is Italian artist Danilo Antoniucci. I am extremely happy and honored that Danilo accepted this collaboration. I love his art, but I am not the only one to admire Danilo’s talent, so he has a lot of work with his own comics and I can only be grateful that he also works with me.

Sissy Pantelis

Dark Siren is the story of a young girl that discovers that she has a wonderful gift, but her gift can harm other people – especially those who offend her. The young girl is scared, so she leaves her home fearing she may inadvertently harm her family. Then she finds out that she is not alone to possess that kind of poisonous gift. Dark Siren is a special story to me. First, there is something of me in the main character of the story. For a long while, I thought that dreaming and writing was a sort of curse cast on me… To come back to Dark Siren, my young niece helped me a lot in making the story and gave me many ideas for the plot; that was a wonderful experience. And last (but not least), the artist working on this story is José Leonardo aka The Chulo. José is from Colombia and his style is very special. I believe that José has really given this story another dimension. He is extremely gifted and he is now also working on the characters of a movie (by the people who did How to Train Your Dragon).

Sissy Pantelis

I have other projects- among other things, I have one or two novels in mind, but that will be for much later so we would rather speak about them in the future than now.

5. How much research do you do?

Quite a lot actually. Most of my stories are pure fantasy and the true things in them are very few, but I need to do a lot of research to get inspiration.

6. Do you write full-time or part-time?

I write full time and I don’t wish to change this – writing is a passion and doing something else at the same time is a big mistake, I found out at a great cost a few years back.

7. Where do your ideas come from?

I am not sure. Sometimes from fairy tales; but I also get a lot of ideas by listening to music or through my dreams!!! 🙂

8. How can readers discover more about you and you work?

I am on Deviant Art: http://gliovampire.deviantart.com – I try to keep the journal updated when anything new comes out.
I am also on FB: https://www.facebook.com/sissy.pantelis and this is my author page:
hhttps://www.facebook.com/pages/Sissy-Pantelis/232168253548554
I have also created a page for Blue Sparkles:
https://www.facebook.com/PuckBlueSparkles
and José and I created a page for Dark Siren:
https://www.facebook.com/darksirengn

If you want to follow my work, you are welcome to follow any of those pages and I am always happy to see comments and answer any questions of the readers.