Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Hi! My name’s Jessi and I’m a newbie author who has currently only published one book. I adore reading pretty much anything, but my favourite is definitely fantasy – particularly with dragons – and I also have a soft spot for sci-fi. After reading and writing, my favourite activities include drawing, messing about in the garden, and playing multiple musical instruments with… varying levels of skill. My favourite element is fire (if you work in fours) or Carbon (if you prefer the full 118) and my favourite punctuation is probably the excellent exclamation mark. At the moment I live in New South Wales, Australia – complete with kangaroos in the backyard! – but I’ve lived in a lot of places, including England, India, Dubai, and Kuwait. In the future I aspire to write more books and study science!
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest (and only) published book is called Dragonheart – if you’re a fan of dragons or the Middle-Grade Fantasy genre, you should check it out on Amazon! Yes, I’m blatantly self-promoting XD
I’ve loved reading fantasy pretty much from the moment I first worked out how letters string together into words – and for as long as I’ve been reading stories about dragons and magic, I’ve also been telling them. Writing a book, though… that was a step up. I knew that if I was going to turn one of my stories into a novel, it would take a long time and a lot of work, so it would have to be something I was passionate about. Enter Dragonheart – an idea dreamed up with the help of some of my best friends when I was only twelve years old, kept buried in the back of my mind for who knows how long. Something about it stood out from my other ideas – the plot felt more original, the characters more compelling – but more than anything, this was a story which I wished I could have read, back when I was nine or ten years old and searching everywhere for dragon books.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Well, my most productive time to write is probably between 10pm and 2am – does that count? Aside from the timing, my writing habits are fairly normal – I tend to write at my desk or on the sofa with my laptop, water bottle, and some classical music or TV show soundtracks in the background.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
My favourite author is probably Robin Hobb, because I love all her books with my entire soul. Other books which fall into this category include Naomi Novik’s brilliant Temeraire series and the only one on this list that isn’t about dragons – Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series. But in terms of books which specifically influenced Dragonheart, the book that comes to mind is Jessica Day George’s Dragonskin Slippers series – which is brilliant, and if you like Dragonheart (or even haven’t read it yet) you should check it out!
What are you working on now?
I’m currently working on a sequel to Dragonheart – you heard it here first, folks! I also have a lot of ideas in the works, including a new series about a group of children who have to find seven ancient swords to defend their island from invaders, and a stand-alone romance story about two princesses trying to unite their warring kingdoms. As you can probably tell, I’m a big fan of fantasy battles!
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m hardly a book-promoting whiz, and I’m probably not as active on social media as I should be, but I do have a Twitter account…. I’ve also submitted my book to a LOT of free promotional sites like AwesomeGang! However, I reckon my most important promotion tool is definitely my blog. You guys should check it out!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
In my opinion, the best story ideas are the ones you’ve kept in your back pocket for at least two or three years. Many of my story ideas are a lot older than that! I would never start writing a story in the same year that I first got the idea for it, mainly because my initial ideas tend to be super brief – a single character (probably not even named) with a snippet of worldbuilding or plot or clever premise needs a long time to develop into a fully-formed cast, world, and plot – but also because initial ideas are often not great, and need time to be refined and combined with other ideas to become something interesting. An idea won’t even be made into a list of notes until I’m sure it’s strong enough to make an actual story, let alone a first draft. Of course, it helps that I come up with ideas much faster than I can write them, so there’s no reason to try and write with a “new” idea when I have such a backlog of “old” ones!
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Well, people always say “write the book you want to read”, and that was basically my motivation for writing Dragonheart – as well as for creating many of my story ideas!
What are you reading now?
Right now I’m reading the Aru Shah series Roshani Chokshi, which (if you haven’t heard of it) is a super fun middle-grade fantasy story full of Hindu mythology. I’m up to Book 2 – three more to go!
What’s next for you as a writer?
For now, I’m just focusing on keeping up my blog, working on the Dragonheart sequel, and maybe starting the writing process for some of my other story ideas. I’m not a full-time author and I don’t intend to be, and at the moment I’m not particularly fussed about trying to get a traditional publishing deal either, so it’s not like I’m aspiring to lofty goals! I’m happy to just wait and see what happens in the future.
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?
This question is basically impossible, because all the series I love are more than 4 books long! Maybe I’ll go for Robin Hobb’s The Liveship Traders Trilogy – they are probably my favourite books ever, after all. Also, with about a thousand pages each they would certainly keep me from getting bored! Actually, if taking up my time is the goal, I might cheat and bring my own works-in-progress – being stranded on a desert island is certainly one way to avoid getting distracted from writing…
Author Websites and Profiles
J.J. Kitchen Website
J.J. Kitchen Amazon Profile
J.J. Kitchen’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Twitter Account