Jen is an author of horror and humour, sometimes a bit of both, living just outside of Chicago. She’s won several awards, including the Yeah Write Microfiction Superchallenge (September 2022), Storytwigs Microfiction Contest (August 2021), and Pick of the Month for “Technically Speaking,” Fiction on the Web (May 2021). Jen has also been Honorable Mention in several contests and was a Top Ten Finalist for the LoveReading Very Short Story Award (March 2022).
Get to know Jen below as she gives her thoughts on what it means to be an author and the advice she gives for dealing with negativity and breaking into the writing community as a woman!
Q: Who has been your biggest supporter(s) throughout your writing career?
A: My husband. We’ve been married 16 years, but I’ve only been writing fiction for about 5 years. When I started writing, the stories poured out of me like they’d been bottled up, and I’ve barely slowed down since. He went with the flow, seeming to understand that it was something I needed to do, watching the kids while I went off to write at the library, and generally just being my rock. He’s always up to brainstorm with me – we become like a two-person writers’ room and just bounce ideas back and forth until something shakes out. And he’s not squeamish about horror themes either. He’s the best.
Q: Where do you draw inspiration from in your work?
A: The “what ifs” inspire me. What if this horrible thing happened? What if that hilarious thing happened? I love taking a “what if” and running with it. I also love contests that involve writing prompts. Having an assigned genre and a required word of character provides a great jumping-off point; I always come up with stories I never would have thought of on my own.
Q: What does it mean to you to be an author?
A: That’s such a great question. I recently created an entire reel about this. Are you an author if you’ve only written short stories (like I have)? Or do you have to have written a book? I guess I’d say you’re an author if your work has been published. It’s possible to be a writer (one who writes) and keep all your writing to yourself, but if you have the guts to put it out there for the world to see, you deserve that author label.
Q: What is your writing process like? Do you listen to certain music, snack, make loads of phone noes when inspiration randomly strikes?
A: I need absolute silence so I can hear myself think and hear my characters talk! But I’m a mom with a full-time job, so 90% of my day is noisy. My phone’s “Notes” program is stuffed to the brim with story ideas and bits of dialogue that occur to me while I’m walking the dog, doing the dishes, or otherwise occupied. Then I go back and write them at like 11 p.m. when I’m finally free.
Q: Is there a genre or subgenre that you want to explore that you haven’t yet? Conversely, are there any that you’ll never write?
A: I’d love to write a really creepy folk horror story. I used to say I’d never write romance, but I’ve written a few contest rom-coms that were great fun, so never say never!
Q: What has been the hardest part of your career as an author so far?
A: For me, the hardest part is not having as much time as I’d like to devote to writing – I have way more ideas than time! Also, so many people are writing nowadays (and writing well) that getting published is challenging because editors receive hundreds of submissions when they only have a handful of slots to fill.
Q: What do you consider to be your greatest strength and weakness as an author?
A: My strengths are plot and dialogue. My weaknesses are character and description – I have to work harder at those.
Q: Who is on your radar as someone you’d love to work with?
A: I’d love to work with Andrea Goyan to adapt her short story, Blood and Thorns, into a screenplay!
Q: At some point in our lives, we’ve all hears the negative comments: “You’re not good enough.” “You’ll never make it.” “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” “You don’t belong.” How do you move forward when faced with negativity?
A: Ignore it all and keep going. Most comments like those say more about the commentor than about you or your writing. All you can do is hone your craft and keep writing. If you believe in your story, do your damndest to make it the best it can be. Someone’s going to get published, it might as well be you.
Q: What advice would you give to women who are wanting to write, especially if it’s something others might perceive as “outside of the norm”?
A: Make writing a daily habit. That doesn’t necessarily mean writing X number of words every day. but doing something related to writing (editing, submitting, researching agents, reading articles, reading books about craft, swapping beta reads with other writers, etc.) daily. Spend as much or as little time as you can carve out that day, even if you only write a sentence or two.
Though Jen mostly writes horror, she is querying a humourous heist novel currently. Honestly, I hope she finds a place for it, because it sounds like so much fun and zany heists are always a great read!
Take a look at Jen’s website and Amazon author page and follow her on X to stay on top of all her writing updates. Check out this year’s recommendation: Little Monsters by Kara Thomas, a thriller that Jen found to be “dark and intriguing.”
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