Hello hello, my peeps and darlings!!! This blog has been sadly neglected lately, but that’s going to change soon (there are event dates on the main page, for one thing!) starting NOW! I have an interview with Gabrielle Marie Kozak, author of COGNITO: Zapata’s Memoirs, which I ARC read (and you can find the review here).

So! On to questions!

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Welcome to the blog, Gabrielle! First of all, can you tell our readers about yourself and COGNITO?

Thank you! About me and COGNITO… Well, I’m a 20-(soon 21-)year-old daycare teacher and former religious Sister, and I wrote COGNITO late last year, some months after leaving the convent. I’ve got red hair and some of my hobbies, besides writing, are crochet, foreign languages, and photography! COGNITO is my 11th (12th by some counts) published book, as well as my flagship.

How long did it take you to write COGNITO?

It took me about two months to write COGNITO, if I don’t count the months in which I knew I was going to write something like it (“me in WWIII after convent”), nor the months between actual writing and publishing. I think I started in either late last September or early October and finished in November-December.

What was the easiest thing and the hardest thing about writing COGNITO?

The easiest thing about writing COGNITO was Gabrielle Zapata’s psychology! Since she’s based off of myself, I mainly had to ask, “What would I do/say here?” In the meantime, I’d say there were actually two hardest things. The first one was making the military and strategic aspects believable even for experienced audiences, and the second one was outthinking Nathan Ammen, the “second” villain. He’s supposed to have the same kind of analytical mind as Gabrielle does, and so when I was plotting Acts II-III I had to sit down at times and do some serious thinking.

Do you have plans for any more Zapata books?

Any more Zapata books? Well, there’s MEMENTO, for sure, but I otherwise don’t intend to write more set in the COGNITO universe. The Expended is its own book, so that doesn’t really count. Then again, I’m only 20, so maybe things will change in the future!

Which one do you consider canon, COGNITO or MEMENTO?

COGNITO is canon. One of my favorite things to do, though, is think about all the little pieces – I could change almost any one thing and the course of the entire storyline changes (eg. MEMENTO‘s plot). But I consider COGNITO the “true” book, even if I have fun experimenting with other causal sequences.

Obviously, Gabrielle is based on you, but are there any other characters that you based on someone else?

The other characters… Well. Sr. Maria Dympha from the Prologue is actually my insert of a fellow religious Sister, with whom I had a special friendship. Ciéran was partially inspired by my ex-military uncle, but Ciéran is also…himself, Ciéran.😆 Besides that, not really. I’ve seen traces of a few of the characters in people I’ve met since then – traces of Jaime Lance and more Ciéran – but I see them more as archetypes of people I may work with in the future. Or, as my first ARC reader mentioned, archetypes of the kinds of souls I may touch later in life.

Do any of your COGNITO characters have theme songs?

Yes – several! I’ll see if I can narrow them down 😂 Jaime Lance’s theme song is Are You With Me by nilu. Nathan Ammen’s (with echoes of a fallen Zapata) is My Design by BLUCOLLR, Kelsi Hemstreet, and Patrick Cunningham. The Director doesn’t have a theme song. Enlai’s (sort of) is Signal by Ganyos and Bolshiee. Mei Li has a few, mostly in Chinese, but one English one is Meet Me on the Battlefield by SVRCINA. Ciéran McKenney’s is hard to put my finger on, but here are a few: Cry by Mandy Moore, and Remember Me by Ivan Torrent and Roger Burruezo. And Gabrielle Zapata’s are Unbroken by Really Slow Motion, Someone Else’s Life by Broken Chalice and David Thulin, and Sacrifice by League of Legends and G.E.M. And, since I’m me, a few book themes are: Pueri Concinite, Entre La Luz Y El Pecado by James Horner, and 2116.7 by Yugo Kanno.

What’s your favorite behind-the-scenes COGNITO fact?

Hm… Perhaps my favorite behind-the-scenes for COGNITO was actually when I made the commercial cover for The Expended. I had to take my single copy out into the street of a Lincoln residential area and grind it into the pavement. A bit of dark red makeup smearing. After tearing the front cover and the first few pages off. It’s to emulate the state of the book after Zapata’s motorcycle accident in Chapter 3. The fun part is the fact that that copy of The Expended was the only one I ever printed with my teenage penname on the cover.

Do you have a favorite drink or snack while writing?

I like drinking coffee, whether decaf or not, and also eating jellybeans! 😂 Maybe because writing takes thinking and thinking takes sugar!

Tell us one or two interesting facts about you.

I’ll give you two interesting facts. The first one is that I have personally processed rabbit(s) for consumption. Apocalyptic skill set, I suppose. The other interesting fact is that I went to Europe at 17 for a senior/pre-convent trip with my father, and some of the best memories of my life are from that trip. One of them, related to COGNITO, is that I remember seeing two Asian-looking teenagers boarding a train in France and thinking, They look like Xiang and Karasu from The Expended!

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And that, my folkses, is all! For more on COGNITO and Gabrielle’s other books, you can visit her website here, and here is the link for COGNITO on Amazon!