Everything You (N)ever Wanted to Know About the Author Jen Sequel

In a previous blog post I talked about how I became an artist and what inspired me. In today’s, I wanted to talk more about my writing and how I became an author.

As with all things, my journey began when I was a child. I was a voracious reader. Getting that Scholastic challenge to track how many books you read was always so much fun! I read everything that I could get my hands on. My earliest favorites were the Frog and Toad books. Their friendship was amazing, and I fell in love with illustrated books. Truthfully, I wanted to create illustrated books because the images were just as much a part of the story (if not more so) than the words on the page. (This is also what draws me to comics.)

I attribute my love of reading to my mother. She instilled in my sister and I a passion for reading. And got us both hooked on Stephen King and mystery/thriller books. I devoured as many Nancy Drew books as I could find and also grew attached to the Trixie Belden series. By the age of 14 I was introduced to the amazing world created by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman with the Dragonlance Chronicles.  

In high school while everyone was reading Sweet Valley High, I was reading the Earth’s Children series by Jean Auel. I learned my Civil War history through the North and South series by John Jakes. When I started working at Wendy’s at the age of 16, my shift supervisor loaned me grocery bags full of books. This is when I read at least 4 or 5 of the Dune series and so many more books by a variety of authors. In all of them, I was transported to other worlds and introduced to so many legends.

I have always felt a kinship with books. And I have longed to be a part of them. Storytelling is an art, and it is more than just the written word. You certainly don’t need a history lesson on the origins of storytelling.

I remember my first scary story. It was written by a friend of mine in elementary school and it scared the bejesus out of me. It was something about a character named Gloria. There was a lot of violence in it but it was also spooky. At that age, and even before, ghost stories were prevalent. I even remember stories told in first grade about a demon behind the school that would take anyone who ventured back there. I was curious and tempted to see the horns that purportedly were sticking out of the earth. To this day I still regret not looking. Yet there is something about the mystery and not knowing.

If asked when I started writing stories, I think I would have to say I have always been writing. I started writing my first novel when I was in sixth grade. It was about a monster in an old house and a group of friends who came across it. This monster was hairy and slimy and only the children could see it. It was slaughtering people in the town, yet nobody believed the kids when they told the adults. So of course, the kids banded together in an effort to stop it.

At the time I think I had about twelve main characters. All of my friends wanted to be a part of it so I named characters after them. Over the years as my writing improved, I continued to return to this story. It went through so many stages over thirty years, yet I still kept wanting to tell this story. It evolved through countless edits and rewrites, yet I never penned the ending. It went from type-written pages on a manual typewriter to an electric typewriter to my first computer. I could probably write a history on technology through the course of writing that book because it evolved just as quickly.

The bulk of the story changes occurred in and after college. I had a two-and-a-half-hour drive from my parents’ home to college and when I went home to visit on weekends, I had a lot of time to plot. By this time, I had cut the number of characters merging several and wove a tale about demons, witchcraft, possession, and enduring friendship. Because this book was special to me, the possibility of receiving rejection letters to traditionally publish was heartbreaking. Not to mention the possibility a publisher may want me to rewrite any portion. Thirty years was enough. I needed to let go.

It took a divorce, a recession, and a friendship from another author who self-published to lead me in the self-publishing world. At that time, I used CreateSpace to publish on Amazon. I read all the literature on marketing and going wide and followed the advice to a T. I spent all of my royalties purchasing an ISBN and “going wide”. A mistake I have not revisited. (But that is another story).

If you haven’t guessed it already, the book I’m referring to is 101 Hilltop Drive. I still need to do one final upgrade to it and change it to my current name, Jen Sequel. I also want to upgrade the cover. As for edits, I believe thirty years and multiple editors is enough. Any issues within can remain there.

Self-publishing was the breakthrough I needed. I don’t have the fear of rejection. I don’t have to worry about someone urging me to change the story. Are my stories still judged? Absolutely. Are they flawed? What in life isn’t? But they exist as the stories that wanted to be told, in the manner they wished to be told in.

That may sound confusing to some. But I have never thought of myself as a creator of worlds per se. I am merely the scribe telling the stories as the characters wish to have their stories told. Books are merely a small part of a character’s life. Short stories are a snapshot. My role is merely to share what I see and hear and hope for the best that it translates well enough to the reader.