Monday 9 September 2013

Guest Author Interview - Jennifer Priester

Welcome to the start of a new week and Monday brings the first new guest author interview for the week. Today we meet fantasy author Jennifer Priester, you can read what she has to say below:
 

Please introduce yourself, who are you and what do you do?
My name is Jennifer Priester. I am an author, artist, book layout designer, and publisher. Besides writing and illustrating books I love to read them, watch TV/movies, play video games, walk my dog, and go horseback riding.

What first inspired you to start writing?
Although this isn’t my first time answering this question, it is the first time I have had a possible answer to it. Thinking back on some of the earliest things I wrote I noticed that two of them were about a dog and a rabbit so it is now my belief that my first dog, CeJaye, and my first rabbit, Friendly, may have been responsible for being my inspiration to start writing.

And what attracted you to fantasy?
I was attracted to fantasy from the first time I ever watched the TV show, Sabrina the Teenage Witch. The talking cat, Salem, is what first got me interested in the show and the combination of Salem and the magic featured in the show is what got me hooked on fantasy. Eventually this led to me reading the book series based off the TV show and to reading more fantasy books later on.

If you could work with any author, who would it be?
I’m not really sure, I like a lot of authors but there also aren’t too many people I find I can work well with. All I really know is that the author would have to love animals as much as I do, like writing animal fantasy from the animals point of view, or writing about friendly magic users such as witches, warlocks, sorcerers, sorceresses, wizards, and genies. They could also like to write about superheroes, time travel, friendly aliens on Earth, time travel, or to some degree about the supernatural. While the subjects can vary, animals must be included in the writing and in order for me to be able to work with them the author would also have to have a good sense of humor and generally be a lot of fun to work with.

Where is your happy place?
It might sound a bit strange, but, for me it’s my local GameStop store.

And where is your dark place?
I’m not really sure. There are places that I really don’t like being but I wouldn’t exactly consider them as bad as to call them my dark places.

How do you go about becoming a better writer?
I mostly reviews given to me about my books and listen to reader feedback. I carefully consider everything, both good and bad, about my previous book while I am working on my next ones. Although I don’t make any changes based on things I don’t agree with, such as in one of my reviews a reader commented that she would have liked to see more details particularly about my villains plan. Often, I leave out some of these details and bring them back up in future stories when the time is right, so at times when I think people will be interested in knowing more about something, what I think about is, do I want to tell them now or later? For the one about my villain, the answer I chose before publishing is later. The reason was that I felt something like this should be revealed by him and not by me or another character, so everything about him and the details behind all his various plans throughout the series are in his story in the last book in the series. Another thing I do is to pay attention to what I like and dislike about the books I read. And the final thing I do is just to keep writing. The more I write the more I improve and as a result my stories come out even better.

What are you working on at the moment?
I am currently working on many different things. For my Mortal Realm Witch series I am working on getting one final review and the books layout before I publish the second book, Mortal Realm Witch: The Magic Continues. This second book will be available by August 2013. Book three, Mortal Realm Witch: Realms Unite?, and Tales of Familiars: The First Mortal Realm Witch Series Companion, are both awaiting my finishing up their inside drawings as well as have yet to be sent out to beta readers and reviewers, and need to be laid out yet. Book four, Mortal Realm Witch: The Adventures of DWW2 has yet to start the editing process. Tales of Young Asantra: The Second Mortal Realm Witch Series Companion, the unnamed book five, Tales of Other Realm Creatures: The Third Mortal Realm Witch Series Companion, and The Guide to Other Realm Creatures, are all still in the writing process. I am also working on the cover design for a free story called: Allura’s First Magical Discovery, writing a free story about DWW and Ally called: Ally & DWW, a two book story about DWW’s familiar Trillman titled: Trillman’s Tales, which features two stories about Trillman, the first of which was written and is free to read until the release of book three on the Mortal Realm Witch website, at which time it will be revised and only include the preview as seen on my blog. I am also working on a free video story called: Book Light which will be a story about Ally and Air Raid. Besides Mortal Realm Witch related books I am also working on many other fiction and nonfiction books. The fiction books include: an unnamed book of animal adventure stories, an unnamed book of dog stories, an unnamed book of cat and horse stories, an unnamed book of random animal stories, an unnamed book of supernatural and sci-fi stories, an unnamed book of Christmas stories, a book titled: Heroes United which is a collection of mostly animal superhero stories, but includes some human superheroes as well, a book called: The Dogs That Saved the World, a book called: Back to the Wild, a book called: The Young Animal Psychics, a book called: “Good Luck” Animal Shelter, and a comic book/graphic novel that was inspired by, and is somewhat based off the lives of my two dogs titled: Spider & Jackal. The nonfiction books I am working on include: Animals in the Shelters which is basically a book about animal cruelty and animal rescue, My Pets and Their Lives, and Just Dreaming: The Dreams I Had and the Stories They Became. Besides these, I am also working on writing a two part educational fiction series. The first part will be titled: Animal World and the second part will be called: Animal World: Endangered. The aim of this series is to educate readers about animals in an entertaining way. In total both parts of the Animal World series will feature over 250 different animals in the span of 41 books.

Tell us about your latest work and how we can find out more.
My two latest published works, as of right now, are; Mortal Realm Witch: Learning About Magic, and a crossover anthology written by myself and 14 other authors called; The Battle of Ebulon.
Mortal Realm Witch: Learning About Magic is Book One in the uniquely written Mortal Realm Witch series. It contains six separate, but connecting, stories, each featuring a different aspect of Learning About Magic. In Learning About Magic you will meet DWW who is just learning she is a witch and that her dog can talk and he is going to teach her how to use magic but it won't be easy.
Throughout Book One, not only will you learn about DWW, who will tell you her origin story about becoming a witch and learning about her new powers and responsibilities, and more, but you will get to read stories about DWW from the point of view of her familiar, Trillman, and the Head of the Witches Council, Trom.

In this book, DWW will also move to the Other Realm to become the full time magic teacher to two magical wolf pups for a year, where she teach them not just magic, but how to hunt and fight as normal wolves as well. During this year she will also learn much about herself in the process. Then, upon returning home DWW will try to stop a warlock from taking over the Realms. You will also meet Air Raid, a dragon, and his new friends and witch, Ally. Ally wants Air Raid to be her familiar, but Trom says dragons don't make good familiars. Together Ally and Air Raid will try to prove him wrong.

Mortal Realm Witch: Learning About Magic is available for purchase in print from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, or as a Kindle eBook.

The Battle of Ebulon is a free download at Smashwords.

Ebulon, the last human city, is under attack by the largest confederation of orcs ever assembled. Against this monstrous force, there's little hope of surviving -- save that their King has a most unique ability. Knowing that his brave troops cannot protect his city on their own, he calls for aid across all worlds, desperately hoping that his pleas for help don’t fall on deaf ears.

Answering the call, heroes from other worlds rally to offer their aid. But even with their help, victory is far from assured as the drums of war haunt the air. The battle is about to begin.

15 authors bring characters from their collective works together in this epic crossover anthology, creating incredible stories of heroism, selflessness and bravery.

For the best places to find out more about my books, me, and more you can visit the Mortal Realm Witch website: www.mortalrealmwitch.com, and my blog: www.animalsandmagic.wordpress.com. Another place to learn about me is to visit me on Goodreads.

Books by Jennifer Priester:

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