A super cool author interview with mad woman (I mean author) Jennifer Caress

What is your book - what is it about?

**Perverted Realities and Perverted Realities: Dragging Wings are about two men, Frankie and Sammy, and their lives. The first book is more about the strange and paranormal situations they get themselves into and Dragging Wings is more about how Sammy and Frankie guide others through their own paranormal situations. Both books are a little darker than I have described here, but I try to add at least a sliver of hope to everything I do.
 
What kinds of things inspire your ideas? Other books, movies, dreams, real life - what?

**People inspire me. People are crazy, demented, strange, egocentric, and inspiring. Add to that my imagination is always on level "high". This works against me most of the time but when it comes to writing it is my greatest asset.
 
How did your characters change through your drafts?

**Great question! Getting to know the characters is exactly like getting to know any new person in my life. It takes conversation and observation. It also takes a little trial and error on my part. There have been times when I wrote a character doing one thing, but it was not true to the character. Characters are not shy about letting the writer know when we might have strayed, haha. For me, the characters clam up and stop talking to me until I go back and rewrite it how they want it to be.

There was one instance when I was "in the zone" and just writing without reading what it was I was writing. The story was flowing inside my head so fast all I had time to do was type like a mad woman. But when I went back over it I thought "This isn't what I typed," and I tried to delete it but the character, Sammy, actually, stopped me. He told me that I had wrote it the way it had happened and deleting it would be wrong. I rolled my eyes and laughed, but I left it the way Sammy wanted it.

Frankie is part human and part dragon. He has dragon scales down the lower part of his jaw. When I first started writing about him, I couldn't see what was on his face. All I saw was something dark, so I wrote that he had tattoos. It wasn't until maybe half way through the first book that he told me that it wasn't a tattoo, it was dragon scales that I was seeing. I almost gave up at that point, haha, because I thought "how the hell am I going to explain DRAGON SCALES??" Frankie just laughed and said, "Why explain?"

I had to stay true to him so I wrote it as it was. Now he and Sammy are dear friends and I love them truly. 
 
Do you ever gets writer's block - if so how do you work past it?

**I have writer's block most of the time. It is rare that the story just flows. It is an exercise in "just doing it". I can always delete it later--and I usually do-- but I find there are fantastic sentences and ideas buried in the crap of forcing myself to write.
 
What books did you read for fun in high school?

**I really started getting serious about studying the paranormal in high school so I read both fiction and non-fictional accounts of all things paranormal. I loved Anne Rice and her vampires! 
 
Where can we find your book?

**The easiest place is online. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. 
 
What is the best review you got so far?

**My best reviews have come from fellow writers, which is the best honor. Look out for the name drop:

"Part Ralph-Bakshi-dream-sequence, part don't-turn-off-the-lights chiller, and part X-Files-esque mystery, Perverted Realities by Jennifer Caress is a highly irreverent novel, but it's nowhere near absurd dragon scales or no.

--Scott F. Falkner"

"The thing is, is that this book is unsettling. The backgrounds and characters have a strangely familiar feel to them. It's almost like these are places we've visited and people we have met at some time or other. But the familiarity is an illusion. It's all a step to the left of the real world.

The stories in Perverted Realities are all strange and interconnected. They range from hauntings by angry ghosts to alien abduction conspiracies to cartoon fantasies. I found the entire book fascinating and hypnotically readable.

Jennifer Caress creates characters that are memorable. They get under your skin. You feel like cheering for them to succeed. This was a quirky and solidly entertaining debut novel by a writer that is definitely worth watching.

--Bob Morgan"


And my favorite because it came from a random person (as posted on Amazon), "I don't read a lot of fictional books, especially with subjects that stretch the boundaries of what is real and not. But regardless, this was a book that played to my curiosity and kept me engaged despite being a kind of thriller and at times just odd story. I'll be looking out for the next book! "
 
What are your favorite three songs. 

**"Enter Sandman", Metallica
"Dancing in the Ruins," Blue Oyster Cult
"Earth" Mourning Glory

Cool !!! Thanks Jenny !!!