Interview With Author Gary Jaron
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am a mystic, a philosopher, and a dreamer, and I am addicted to reading and writing.
An example of that addiction was demonstrated when I was buried under an overwhelming amount of material required to be read and studied during my first years at law school; I still had to feed my habit. I read the two Alice in Wonderland tales as well as the complete John Le Carre’s George Smiley series.
The books I have self-published include the following:
Find Your Way: A Mystic Philosopher’s Pragmatic Orienting System
The Qabalah Gates of Light: The Story of How and Why the Masters of the Occult Misunderstood the Jewish Kabbalah
The Qabalah Paths of Light: The Occult Qabalah Reclaimed
The Shattered Dreamers Urban Fantasy Series:
Through the Gate of Dreams
All My Days Are Trances
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
I am currently working on Beleive That Love Will Never Fail, the third fantasy novel in the Lamont Corazon and Basha Edelman Urban Fantasy series. It continues their attempts to make right what went wrong after they opened the Gate of Dreams. It tells how they rescued their friends, redeemed a once-dead God named Tezcatlipoca, and transform him into Smoking Mirror, the goddess of Dreaming.
It continues my love of exploring Lucid Dreaming and the effects that dreams can have on your waking world life. In my series, the two teen lovers live two lives, one in 1980 San Francisco and the other in the Lovecraft realm of Dreamland.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
The way I wrote my first fantasy novel and the nonfiction books was to get up at 5 am every weekend morning, sit in front of my computer and write till noon. Now that I am retired, I still get up every day and begin working on my writing.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
In fiction, the writing style of Ray Bradbury and the Dreamland cycle of tales by Howard Philip Lovecraft. In nonfiction, the writing of Viktor Frankl, Robert Pirsig, William James, and the work on the Jewish Kabbalah by Gershom Scholem.
What are you working on now?
The third Urban Fantasy novel of my two teenage lovers, in my Dreamland/San Francisco series, Believe that Love Will Never Fail.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Always a challenge. I have posted on Goodreads, my Facebook page, my blog site, and now here.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write and do not be afraid of re-writing and even throwing away, metaphorically speaking, your first hundred or so pages. I spent writing about 200 pages in the early drafting of my first fiction and nonfiction books. They are just stored on my computer. Non of those pages ever really got used in the final versions. But the willingness to write and toss away earlier versions helped get me going. That and don’t expect things to go as planned. Listen to your unconscious – it knows more than your conscious mind. Your characters will take you places that you did not plan and expect. Just try and keep up as best you can.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Find a time when you can repeatedly be writing. You need to commit yourself to being in the same place and at the same time to do this. The conscious decision and conscious act of commitment will enable you to unlock your unconscious mind into cooperating with your conscious mind and recognize that you are serious. Then the words will begin to flow…
What are you reading now?
Stephen Greenblatt’s The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve. Brian Stableford’s Young Blood. Daniel Matt’s translation of The Zohar. Carolina Montague’s Forever Green.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Continue writing my Urban Fantasy series with my teen lovers Lamont and Basha, and work on a long-term project exploring the ideas of William James in the project with the current title of The Varieties of Human Experience.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The Essential William James by James Campbell, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Annotated Sherlock Holmes by William Barring-Gould, and a thick blank book.
Author Websites and Profiles
Gary Jaron’s Social Media Links