Author Name: Jacki Renée
A Favorite Horror or Halloween-Themed Movie: Sleepy Hallow (1999)
Author Bio:
If you see me behind the wheel. Lips moving. No one else in the car. Don’t be frightened. I’m having a conversation with one of the many characters who live in my mind. But if I’m bobbing my head and snapping my fingers, getting into the beat of the music and the lyrics to the song, do not disturb. I’m developing a story or a character.
Music sparks my inspiration to write and I listen to a variety of music. I credit my story ideas to the emotions I sense when listening to music. It’s the tone of the artist’s voice mixed with the sounds coming from the instruments that sends my literal mind into another dimension. I play songs on repeat until I can put into words how I want my character(s) to be perceived.
Reading is my Passion, writing is my Pleasure. An avid reader, I pick up a book to escape everyday life for a few hours. And if the story is exceptionally good, I’ll escape reality for twenty-four hours. Reading fictional novels since high school, from timeless literary masterpieces to today’s mainstream fiction, I’ve found both passion and pleasure in the written world of books. I divide my “me time” between my daughters, writing, and reading. It started as an after work hobby until a follower encouraged me to try writing on a professional level. I nurtured my gift into an obtainable dream.
A web search for information on a teen soap opera series tapped into my pleasure for writing. My first adventure happened when I stumbled upon FanFiction. After months of following many aspiring writers on the website, I worked up the courage to submit a one-shot story. The feedback and comments I received encouraged me to write more. It didn’t take long before the one-shots turned into short stories. Then one day, a short story turned into my first full-length novel, which expanded into a trilogy and now a planned series of trilogies. Even after a two-year break from posting on the site, my stories are still getting views, favorites, and comments. I look back on those posts to measure how much I’ve grown. The redundancy, grammar, and punctuation errors are criminal acts for which I can be prosecuted, but those stories are my beginnings. My babies. When I give pep-talks to author friends, I always start with, “you have to crawl before you walk; walk before you run; then run so you can leap over the hurdles and cross the finish line as a published author.”
My approach to writing is to draw the outline and allow the imagination of the reader to color in the blanks. Meticulously chosen words can outline the plot yet still hide the truth in plain sight. Emotional words invoke the images and colors, sounds and scents, tastes and touch of the story. Words are the clues used to visualize the story. I strive to create a portal to a different reality, so my readers see the story through the eyes of the character(s).Call me sinister, but I love keeping my readers confused to the end, then shock them when I point out the obvious. If you commit to traveling the road, you get to experience the peaks and valleys and walk with the characters into the arms of a “Happily Ever After”.
My goals as an author are to… always finish what I start; be it a book written by a fellow author, or a manuscript I worked on but put aside. Expand my reading palate by finding new authors and “paying-it-forward”. Stay true to my beliefs, yet open myself to a world seen through the eyes of others. Always find the positive in the face of differences because my stories may not be for everyone, but they will entertain someone.
Author Links:
Book Title: Telling Necessary Lies
Blurb:
How strong is a relationship that is built on lies? Boulder, Colorado is the last place Dr. Danielle Edwards expected to have her world shaken off its axis. Everything about Colonel Bryan K. Hawk IV is devised to draw her to him; the way he dresses, the way he interacts with her, his motherless child. He’s trained in the art of seducing and pleasing a woman in bed so she’ll give away her secrets. The government didn’t train Bryan to protect his own heart from falling in love with Danielle.
Book Purchase Link(s):
Social
