D. Gabrielle Jensen

I have many and none, at the same time. My childhood was something you see in movies. Not in a romanticized way but in a way most people don't realize still exists outside of Hollywood. We weren't "off-the grid;" we had electricity and phones, but we were several miles from the nearest town and 100 miles round trip from the nearest supermarket. I spent a great deal of my childhood on my own, entertaining myself. I read, a lot, especially Greek mythology, and I would spend hours listening to the radio or my parents' records. I grew up surrounded by books and music and they became the cornerstones of who I am as a person, as an adult.

Even though I likely wouldn't be the person I am today without my books and music, I felt so isolated and alone so far away from even my school friends. Monthly trips to the city for our groceries were always stretched out to make them worth the time it took to get there with dinner out and a movie and I never wanted them to end. When my family would take vacations to Denver, I felt at home, like I belonged. As I got older, my daydreams for the future included life in cities like Los Angeles, New York, London. It wasn't always about the city as much as what I wanted to do. I didn't believe I could be a writer and live in the middle of the Colorado nowhere. When I toyed with the idea of joining the FBI, that meant Washington, DC. Everything I thought I wanted to do, I thought needed to be done in a major city. And I was comfortable with that.

I was meant to start Kindergarten when I was four and in the year leading up to that, my dad thought I would be behind the other kids if I didn't know how to read and write when I started school. Then the state changed the deadline for turning five from January 1st to September 1st and I had to wait another year to start school. A year I spent reading. I wrote my first story in the first grade and after that there was no stopping me.

Developing a unique writing style means bending the rules, bucking convention. But to do that successfully, you have to know the rules first. Be able to defend choices that may be questionable, like commas that may not be grammatical but are absolutely functional. Or ellipses someone doesn't think are necessary. As long as they aren't wrong, they can be right. By that, I mean, you can't just drop a comma any ol' where and try to use style and unconventionality as a defense for typos. You still shouldn't connect two complete sentences with a comma and nothing else (that's why we have semicolons and conjunctions). But, commas are an indication that the reader should pause, whether for intonation, inflection, or drama. Put them anywhere you like, as long as you can back them up with grammatical evidence.

My current trilogy was published through a small press in a conventional fashion. I was asked by the publisher to submit a query--I did still have to submit a query--and they gave me a contract for all three books. I had originally planned on self-publishing but I knew being solicited by a publisher is almost unheard of so I decided to give it a chance. The prospect of having someone else to help with marketing, someone else to do contract negotiations with a cover artist, an editor I didn't have to pay . . . It was all quite attractive. But I have had the experience, I have learned the lessons and, while nothing is set in stone, I will likely handle my own affairs moving forward. Conventional or traditional publishing is not for me. I prefer the absolute veto power that comes with self-publishing.

The "Dragons Within . . ." anthology collection is represented by the same publisher who approached me about representing the Fia Drake trilogy. Fia Drake got her start in the DW:CHW collection so the editor and marketer were familiar with the character and wanted to see more of her story. That first book, "Claiming Her Wings," earned first place in the 2019 Feathered Quill book competition, affording each of us the title of "award-winning author." It was, however, neither the first award-winning piece I had written nor the first anthology where I had work featured, it was simply the collection that introduced the world to my protagonist.

I think one of the most important things about writing a formidable female character (I hesitate to use the term "strong woman," as it implies the opposite to also be true and I don't believe it is) is to make sure she is realistic and likeable. Of course, I don't mean either of those in absolute terms. A female zombie can be realistic; a female serial killer can be likeable. Realistic just means her training should match her skills. No one picks up a firearm for the first time and shoots the target center mass, unless it's clearly written as a stroke of luck. At the same time, an expert mark(wo)man wouldn't forget to release the safety lock, at least not without a very good reason (traumatic brain injury, drugs, etc.). And likeable only means that readers don't want to skip that character's scenes. A common complaint I hear about female characters is they are never nice--to anyone. They are written to be callous and unfeeling, with no vulnerability, humility, or compassion, in an attempt to show how strong they are. When the true measure of strength is not in how hard you can be but in how soft.

"Mark of the Hunter" was the story that introduced her to the world, through the Dragons Within: Claiming Her Wings collection. The collection came about following a challenge in a writing community: craft a complete 5000 word speculative fiction story featuring a human/human-like female protagonist with dragon-like qualities, in the course of a month. It's admittedly not that steep a hill, when you consider authors do ten times that every November. But for some of the participants, this was the first complete draft they had ever completed. But I am what is known in the author world as a pantser (or plantser, depending on how you look at my process). I just write, often without any kind of definitive plan. With Fia, I had a name (Fiammetta "Little Flame" and Drake, a breed of dragon) and a vague idea that she was a bounty hunter. Of what, I actually didn't know until much later. In the first scene I wrote for her, I think I thought she was a zombie hunter. But then my fascination with religious mythology took over and I discovered (yes, discovered--pantser, remember?) she was hunting souls, condemned souls that had been released from the underworld. After I got my footing in her world, she really took the reins and the story became hers, I simply took the dictation.

There is an underground corridor connecting Concourses A and B in Chicago's O'Hare. Events of the day found me waiting inside security, behind the gate for nearly two hours before my flight so I went exploring. I found this corridor and rode the people mover back and forth several times, just watching the lights and listening to the music. The corridor is (or was, at the time) quite dark and you are surrounded on all sides by neon lights that dance in time with the music piped in through the speakers. I think that was when I really started to understand the unique ecosystem and culture that exists within an airport. They simultaneously represent the city they service while also existing as their own autonomous zone with a vibe all their own.

My aunt is a phenomenal artist. Growing up, she didn't necessarily teach me as give me the tools to learn on my own, which I think is how she learned, for the most part. I would ask her, on occasion, how do I draw a rose the way you do? I'm still not sure how to draw a realistic rose. But I also took every art class I could as a kid. Through the community recreation program, through school, any time I could find to create something I took it. I think the thing I learned in all of that that really stuck with me was perspective drawing, the methods of making a square into a box, a box into a house, a house into a neighborhood. How to give things depth by figuring out where the principle lightsource is, how strong it is, and where the horizon is. As long as those elements stay consistent, the depth will come.

My dad was a photographer. Not professional but he shot for the yearbook when he was in high school and he did photography in 4-H. He gave me my first camera, which had been his. It was a simple machine but I had to load the film manually and I never mastered that, not with that camera. I gave up on it after only a few tries and picked up the cardboard box disposable jobs that became so popular in the 1990s. I probably burned through at least fifty of those things in five years. With film, you have to be a little more selective about what you shoot at. It wasn't until my late 20s that I got a smart phone with a serviceable camera and now that is the thing I look for in a phone. I also have a professional-grade DSLR that I love taking to new places, or to get a new look at old places.

Absolutely. Of course, the people whose job it is to teach new, aspiring cosmetologists are going to hype up the field, but I have seen first hand the importance of what I'm doing. During the past year, many government authorities decided that cosmetologists and barbers were essential workers under the heading of mental health providers. We were told in school that cosmetology is recession-proof (people may not go as often but they will always find a way to pay for a haircut) and one of a handful of careers unlikely to be replaced by technology, at least not in the lifetime of anyone currently living, and we saw proof of those claims over the past year. But there is a connection between cosmetologist and client that cannot be replicated by technology. I see it in the faces of satisfied clients. Cutting your own hair at home doesn't give you that same level of excitement and pleasure you get from a trained professional.

I am going to presume this to be in reference to my own handmade jewelry store, Punk in Pearls Designs, and say one of my favorite creations was never meant to be jewelry. Where I live there is an antique superstore that is two floors jam-packed with antiques of all varieties. Directly inside the front door is a table filled with tiny things. Buttons, patches, little hardware items, Scrabble tiles and other orphaned game pieces. I dug through one dish for what might have been half an hour or more to find sets of keys that were close enough to call them mates. Skeleton keys, trunk keys, even keys that once belonged to old clockwork toys. One set of trunk keys were adorned with pink freshwater pearls and strung from earring wires and I think that one pair of earrings is the best indicator of the kinds of jewelry I create--soft and pretty but also industrial.

I have several ideas in the early planning stages. "Planning," for me, is a bit of a misnomer but what it really means is when I sit down to write something, I almost always know where I'm going. I may not have any idea how I'm going to get there but I know where I'm going. My most pressing is a longer short story that will be included in a limited-time urban fantasy collection, launching in November. Because I just let the characters tell me their story in their way, I don't have a lot more detail than that, save for there is a siren masquerading as a busker.

I discovered AllAuthor through the monthly cover contest in 2018 for my poetry collection, Battle Magic. I have slowly but surely dig in a little deeper to find more of the benefits available on the site and so far I am pleased with my decision to pay for all the bells and whistles.