ARH – We are pleased to welcome Jessica Moran as our Featured Author for this week.
JM – Thank you. It’s a real pleasure and an honor to be here getting a chance to chat with you . I’ve become a real fan of the Pagan Writers Community and all the effort you guys put into helping authors get out to a larger audience.
ARH – Please tell us a little more about yourself.
JM – I am an international mutt, who is 29 years old. I was born in Framingham, MA but I grew up in Dominican Republic’s capital city of Santo Domingo. My family is a mix of Cuban, Spanish, Indio (Indigenous people of South America), French, Lithuanian, Irish, & Russian. I draw on these divergent cultures for the inspiration in my writing. I am deeply moved by mythology and legendary stories I’ve gleaned over the years from books, family storytelling, and school. I often use these as inspiration for my writing but add my own twist when using these themes. I am the product of an amazing single parent, who is a survivor of domestic violence and who is also a huge part of my inspiration and drive to keep writing. I have been a practicing Pagan for fourteen years and as I grew and developed my spirituality I became a Shamanic Healer with a mix of Celtic, Norse, and Native energies binding my path together in a funny, quirky Fae mist that has been my unorthodox guide for the past decade.
ARH – How did you get started as a writer?
JM – Oddly enough I started writing when I was in the First Grade, I loved writing stories and ever since I put pencil to paper I was hooked. However the real leap into writing as a career was not a common thread in my life until I discovered poetry and fantasy fiction. Around the age of fifteen I started down my spiritual path and became very intensely interested in getting to know the Gods and Goddesses of old. This lead to the meat of my current literary pursuits. We need more storytelling and that is what I hope to bring back in a larger accessible format. I would love to see more of the kind of writing that inspired me: The works of Peter Beagle, Terri Windling, Brian and Wendy Froud, Mercedes Lackey, and Charles de Lint to name a few.
ARH – Tell us more about Musings from the Lips of a Dark Rose: A Symphony in Darkness and Light.
JM – Musings is a deeply personal poetic journey in which I invite the reader to meet mythology on different perspectives. There is a strong feminine presence in the work with pieces like “Lillith” where the woman reclaims her Goddess-hood or “Gorgon’s Breath” where the Medusa myth is revisited from Medusa’s perspective and we see not a monster but a priestess paying for a mistake she was never guilty of. This piece is definitely not for the faint of heart as some of the poems betray my love of the Dark Romantic vein of Goth subculture and can be a tad grim and gory but effective in getting its point across.
ARH – Why did you choose to go with PublishAmerica? What was that experience like?
JM – PublishAmerica was a choice that I made with the complete understanding that they are a step up (but barely) from vanity press. I chose the simply because they covered the costs of the book creation and I was working & going to school and did not have enough time to properly shop for a standard publisher. It is choice I would not repeat if my circumstances had been different. You have to publish your own copies (that is no issue in and of itself) but adding their high shipping costs makes it highway robbery.
ARH – What inspired you to write this book?
JM – It was a very emotional poetry read for the Women’s Center at my university. Our school has some very troubled history with protecting its female students from rape/sexual harassment/sexual assault and I was incredibly fed up with the issue. I also wanted to prove that mythological poetry, poetry that used multi-syllabic words still had a market in the current culture. I wanted to prove Pagan poetry was relevant.
ARH – Do you have more writing ideas for the future?
JM – Actually I am currently working on two projects. The first is a YA series and my hope is that the first novel “A Wolf in Witch’s Clothing”© should be en route to the publisher by mid 2012. I am also working on a second poetry collection that will revolve around the Heroine’s Journey in female myths.
ARH – Are you planning to use PublishAmerica again, or has another publisher shown interest?
JM – No. I have decided to pursue a traditional publisher but at the moment am still brokering with the difficult task of locating the best agent to accomplish this.
ARH – As an author, what do you think is the most important piece of advice that you would give an unpublished writer?
JM – Get a copy of Writer’s Market from the current year and familiarize yourself with you market. It helped me figure out where I wanted to take my current projects and also helped avoid scams.
ARH – Where can we go to learn more about you and purchase your books?
JM – My short story “The Raven Maid’s Tale” which is featured in the “The Best New Sci-Fi & Fantasy for 2004” edited by Stephen Fox can be purchased at:
http://www.amazon.com/Best-New-Sci-Fi-Fantasy-2004/dp/1932966404/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1322531252&sr=8-16
My poetry collection “Musings from the Lips of a Dark Rose: A Symphony in Darkness and Light” is also available at Amazon (the shipping from Amazon is cheaper):
http://www.amazon.com/Musings-Lips-Dark-Rose-Symphony/dp/1605632996/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322531522&sr=1-1
And it can also be bought directly at PublishAmerica directly (but the shipping is wicked):
http://www.publishamerica.net/product9761.html
ARH – We appreciate you spending some time with us today Jessica! We wish you continued luck with your future writing endeavors.
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