Guest Blogger: Balthazar Rodrigue Nzomono-Balenda, Author of The Depth of My Soul

Balthazar Rodrigue Nzomono-Balenda ( August 29, 1981), known as Rodrigue or Balthazar is a French-born Danish author and he is originally from the Republic of the Congo. Balthazar was born in Oullins, which is a suburb in Lyon, in France and his parents were diplomats in South Africa, before he and his family moved to Denmark. His parents, André & Rose Nzomono-Balenda were diplomats under the mandate of the former Congolese president, Pascal Lissouba. In 1997,there was civil war in the Congo As presidential elections scheduled for July 1997 approached, tensions between the Lissouba and Sassou camps mounted. On June 5, President Lissouba's government forces surrounded Sassou's compound in Brazzaville and Sassou ordered members of his private militia (known as "Cobras") to resist. Thus began a four-month conflict that destroyed or damaged much of Brazzaville and caused tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

Balthazar has written two books, The D
epth of My Soul and The Struggle of Power & The Fight for Survival. He is a multimedia designer and a student at the Nordic Multimedia Academy (NOMA). Balthazar identifies himself as a French – born Congolese because he is more connected with the Congo and France than Denmark. He speaks French, English, Lingala, Norwegian, Danish, partially German, Dutch and Afrikaans. Balthazar learns Chinese and Japanese in his spare time, he writes poems, he paints, he goes out and enjoys himself. Balthazar is also a member of the International Society of Poets, which runs poetry.com and he sometimes publishes poems at poetry.com. There will be more books from him this year.

You can visit his website at www.ganymedeweb.com.


My Challenge as an Author
by Balthazar Rodrigue Nzomono-Balenda, A Depth of My Soul

The biggest challenge for me is finding an agent because I don’t have enough resources to pay that agent. I don’t have enough knowledge about different agents and what do they do. Sometimes I ask myself if the time is right for me to find an agent and the other question, if they believe that I have something to contribute. Personally, I believe I have something to contribute because when I publish my books, I focus on different causes our leaders may sometimes ignore such as genocide, war crimes, dictatorship, abuse, torture etc. Sometimes, I think we may complain for a long time about some of these causes our politicians ignore; but the bottom line is, it is our responsibility to remind them about these causes and even if they don’t want to listen, we must not quit.

There are other challenges I have faced as an author: finding a publisher was not easy for me in Denmark and other countries include United States. There were publishers in America that only wanted to push authors who are residents of the U.S. and Canada and it was depressing for me because I publish poems in American website such as www.poetry.com and www.allpoetry.com.

I chose to publish my books in United States because it has embraced my talents as a writer and I am forever grateful to America for lifting me up in this area. Promoting my books have not been easy for me and I was struggling to find effective solutions on how my promotion could be successful and to be honest with you, I am still struggling to promote my book, but I am on my way to reach out to my readers and let them know that my book has a lot to offer and in order for me to bring awareness to them, I explain to them about the content of the book, which is about justice. The message, I have to my readers is that justice without peace is like living as a dead man in the inside.

Note: This article is also published at:


9 comments:

  1. Thanks for stopping by, Balthazar! I know being in Denmark has some disadvantages for anyone wanting a book deal in the states, but you found a way. Good for you!

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  2. An interesting interview

    thank you for sharing

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  3. What a powerful closing line - "justice without peace is like living as a dead man on the inside" What a great truth to bring forth. This sounds like a wonderful book, Balthazar! I wish you much success in it and all of your future works!

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  4. Thanks for coming over. Great post.

    Morgan Mandel
    http://morganmandel.blogspot.com

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  5. I am very grateful to promote my book in United States and compare to Denmark, the market is bigger here. I am grateful to Dorothy for helping me promoting my book. I have struggled to promote it on Facebook and other places without any success. In this book, I am concerned about child abuse, genocide in Armenia, civil wars around the world etc. Our leaders are sometimes cold beasts who just go after their interests. Sometimes, they forget that freedom does not come cheap and it is not negotiable.

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  6. If you have any question, please let me know.

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  7. If you click on the cover of my book, you will discover that it is also downloadable for as an e-book and I encourage you to go for it.

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  8. Hard enough doing promotion here as an embedded citizen, but I can hardly fathom how tough it must be from Denmark. That gets a huge amount of respect in my book. I certainly hope you acheive everything you set out for . . . Heaven knows you're working for it!

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  9. Yeah I hope so too and I want to work as hard as I can to reach my audience around the world. My priority is the causes that I love to fight for. Justice, freedom, peace, dignity because these values mean a lot to me and I believe they make a difference in the world.

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