«The Vampire’s Reunion»:
Fantasy Writer from Baia Mare aged 18
Iasmina-Katia Oțoiu is a young writer, who wrote her first story when 8 years old, and who recently published her debut novel entitled “The Vampire’s Reunion” or, alternatively, “The Vampire’s Rebellion.”
The book has 460 pages, is richly illustrated and talks about atypical minority vampires. Iasmina confessed in an interview for the newspaper ”The Voice of Maramureș” that she chose to write a book about vampires to address the social rejection of children who are perceived as outcasts. “Thisis, indeed, extraordinary. It is something I have wanted ever since I was a little child. Nothing compares to the feeling of your work being published and, even better, to the feeling of talking about it in book launches. I used vampire characters because I wanted to send a message about the isolation felt children who don’t quite fit in. I found vampires, with their dark and isolated attitude, to be the perfect creatures to embody these children. I followed these vampire children in different social settings, each of them struggling with a different kind of pressure. The book is dedicated to anyone with an open heart and a desire to be entranced in a fantasy story. It doesn’t have a specific age target, because I personally consider that, usually, books don’t fit in an age group. declared Iasmina-Katia Oțoiu.
Iasmina-Katia is a student at ’Mihai Eminescu’ National College in Baia Mare, in her senior year. She admitted that she has had a passion for reading and writing since childhood. ”I have had this passion for writing since I was 8 years old, when, encouraged by my parents, friends and other relatives, I wrote my first story, in which my cat was a super-heroine who saved me from an evil witch’s claws. Reading means for me achieving new experiences. Reading inspires you, makes you reflect on the world and can make you experience a wide range of emotions. Furthermore, reading opens a door for you to see inside the author’s mind. It’s like having a telepathic conversation with someone else. Writing, as well, can mean a lot of things. It can be therapeutical, helping you release certain emotions. It can manifest as a form of meditation or it can be stormy, it can be planned or not. Writing starts from the question ’What if…?’ Writing, you get to know yourself better, it’s a way of exploring your own mind,’ said Iasmina.
She revealed that she is a lover of cats, of of sports, of personality quizzes and of philosophy. She plans to continue her education abroad and to continue to dedicate herself to reading and writing.
Article by
Cristina Lupu
published in
The Voice of Maramureș,
26 November 2019,
p. 16