WATCH OUT: JD Glass Interview

I want to welcome you all to another edition of Watch Out. This week I’m thrilled to bring you another fabulous guest. Author and musician JD Glass is here.
Welcome JD, it is a pleasure to have you here today.

JDG:Thank you so much for having me!

SC:For those readers who are new to you and your work, please tell them a little about yourself.
What, or who inspired you to write?

JDG: That’s a really large question! I started writing as a kid, when I’d already read everything I’d had for the third or fourth time and I knew it would be a week (at five, that’s FOREVER!!!) before we went to the library again.

SC:Do you find it hard to balance your music and writing?

JDG:Only when we’re actively recording and I’m editing something new! Then time management becomes an essential skill. Otherwise, they really aid each other.

SC:How many books do you currently have published? Can you tell us a little about your latest release?

JDG:I’vegot…five books published, with a bunch of short stories, a novella, and a 40 page mini-graphic novel. The most current work out now is the novella, titled Triskellion, and part of the Outsiders collection (www.briskpress.com)

SC:Are there any author’s who have inspired you, or ones you look up to?

JDG:There are so many whom I admire! Of the ones that are still actively writing, I definitely haveto give tremendous credit for inspiration in so many ways to Katharine Kerr (author of the Deverryseries) and Susan Smith

SC:Craziest place you have ever performed with your band?

JDG:A very strange festival that had its stage in the parking lot of an Italian specialty shop.

SC:If you had to pick between music and writing books do you think you could pick one career over the other?

JDG:Honestly, no. They’re actually the same: they both require writing. With both, I’m conveying a story and its emotions. And the cadence of music greatly informs my prose style—in fact, when I write, I write as if it’s going to be read aloud (and therefore heard ).

SC:Being a published author what is the one big misconception you think that people have about writers/authors?

JDG:That we get to sit around all day drinking the caffeinated beverage of our choice just letting our imaginations run wild while we cash enormous royalty checks! And when we’re not doing that, we’re jet setting.

SC:If you could pick to be a heroine from your books for a day, who would you pick and why?

JDG:The great thing about being an author, is that I literally get to be that main character while I’m working on the book—so I get to be each of them for many many days, even months, at a time.

SC:What are you currently working on now? Anything you can give the readers a sneak peak of?

JDG:Right now, I’m working a couple of things: CORE, which will become available at San Diego Comic Con the third week of July, and Glass Lions, which will release next year some time. CORE is a semi-annual that highlights a particular fan fave character—Nina—with behind-the-scenes and in-between stories, all the things the readers want to know about.

It starts out like this:

“We were somewhere between the 18th and 19th districts of Vienna when it all came crashing down.”
Glass Lions is a complete novel, and a stand-alone (like the others) yet still related to the series (such as it is). And…I’ve a project in the works with artist and writer, Kris Dresen (www.krisdresencomics.com ) which we’re very excited about.

While this is not the project we’re working on, it’s a line from Glass Lions and allows me to share some of Kris Dresen’s art:

SC:What was the best advice you ever got as a writer/musician, and who gave it to you?

JFG:The best advice I’ve ever gotten has been this: to be a better writer, read. To be a better musician, listen. And keep practicing, all of it, all around, all the time. Because it’s always, always, about craft.

SC:Any writing habits?

JDG:I write every day, usually with music on, and usually, it’s a specific soundtrack created just for whatever it is I’m working on.

SC:Any crazy stories from the music world that you can share?

JDG:lol! Too many! But…you know all thosewarnings your Mom gave you about what people in show biz are like? Some of that is very true, so you have to be a little careful about who’s offering what and what they might really want from you in return. Then again, that’s probably true for most things ?.

SC:What message would you like readers to walk away with after reading your books and or hearing your music?

JDG:That there is hope. Life will and does hand us challenges that seem like they’ll break us, but those things can not only be overcome, they can also be a valuable part of who we’re meant to be. We are—each and every one of us—in our hope and our pain, in our triumphs and losses, beautifully, preciously, commonly, human. And because of that, our shared humanity, we are, each and every single one of us, capable of being heroic, and in fact are, in many ways, every single day.

SC:Where can readers go to find more info about you and your books?

JDG:To find out about “me” per se, people can go here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/JD-Glass/54395246339 as well as myspace.com/jdglass (and twitter, too: http://twitter.com/JDGlass ).
While not everything I’ve written is on this site (http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/categories.phpcategory=Paperback-Books/Lesbian-Fiction/Browse-by-Author/Glass%2C-JD) it’s a good place to start. And anyone who has questions about other works (including CORE, Glass Lions, or any of the other work) can always, always, feel free to drop me a line here: jdglass01@yahoo.com

Thank you so much for having me here!

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