J. L. Sullivan

Being told I was wrong solely because of my age. While kids lack real-world experience, it’s that lack of real-world experience that creates a viewpoint without biases and baggage. Now that I have kids of my own, I’m sensitive not to automatically discount their opinions or comments simply because they are young.

I enjoy urban fantasy and horror books the most. Occasionally, I like a contemporary young adult or magical realism story, but mostly, I love stories with fantastical—and sometimes horrifying—things lurking just beneath an otherwise normal world.

Learning how to set goals and working hard to achieve them. Especially in high school and college, I learned very quickly that if I wanted to succeed, it was on me to make that happen. I feel like learning how to manage your time, prioritize, and balance life for the first time is crucial to our development as people.

In high school, I wrote for a local newspaper as an extracurricular project. However, after my first few submissions came back with more red markups than black type, I learned the tight structure of journalistic writing. It is as much a science as an art. And like most high schoolers, I thought I was smarter than my teacher and didn’t want to be constrained by journalistic rules, so I started a literary magazine with some friends. My school allowed us to use the school printer and we sold copies in the cafeteria. That began my journey from journalism into creative writing.

In sixth grade, my parents gave me a word processor, so I wrote a science fiction story. Some friends read it and liked it, so every Friday, I’d distribute 12 pages, comprised of three chapters, to my classmates. Though I didn’t know it at the time, having to produce pages every Friday taught me valuable lessons about how to structure a plot. I watched way too much tv as a kid, so of course, my story had cliffhangers right before school breaks and a climax at the end of the year like a season finale.

I tend to go way deeper than required. I typically do so much research and create so much backstory that I end up never using half of it. But through that process, I get inspired by what I learn and it shapes and fills out the story. For this novel, I read the original Aladdin’s Lamp tale and spent months researching the history and mythology of djinn.

I always wanted to write a fairy tale retelling. As I researched original fairy tales and folklore, I stumbled upon the original Aladdin’s Lamp from One Thousand One Nights. I loved the story, so decided to tackle a retelling. As my version unfolded, however, it evolved further and further from the source material, but I decided to go with it and see where it led. The themes are the same, but this novel became less of a retelling and more of a reimagining of the source material.

For this story, I needed a main character who wanted something remarkable to happen because of his otherwise unremarkable life. So I began with a very average, urban-dwelling teenager being raised by a single mom. I also believe teens are under an insane amount of pressure, which can sometimes lead to mental or physical challenges, so I decided to highlight vasovagal syncope in Bax’s story.

Finding the time. Like many authors (especially debut authors), I have a full-time job in addition to writing. And a family on top of that. It can be a challenge to balance everything and still make time to write. But when it’s your passion, you somehow find the time. For me, that’s before 6:00 am when the house is quiet and everyone’s still asleep.

My “shower thoughts” tend to be less profound, and more detail-driven. When I’m writing, I get so emersed in the story and characters, I overlook logistical details. I’ll have the characters celebrating Christmas, and then in the next chapter, they’re at a pool party. For some reason, in the shower, it will hit me that I jumped forward four months and I need to explain what happened in between.

I love listening to music. Music is always on at my house. Literally, when we wake up, we turn on something. What we turn on varies based on who’s home. Being a product of the 90s, my go-to is always grunge—Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, or Chris Cornell to name my top picks. If we’re having dinner, it’s usually jazz or blues—Norah Jones, Ray Charles, or maybe Etta James. If it’s Chore Day, then it’s usually modern artists to keep the kids motivated—Dua Lipa, Lizzo, or Harry Styles.

I love creating the rules of an entire world. I enjoy taking liberties with the norms of reality and bending them just enough to still maintain believability. While I admire people who can write memoirs or biographies, I could never pull that off. I’d end up with a biography about a president who was a secret vampire. Hmm…that might work…

Very much so. I am lucky enough to come from a large family, so big holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving are events. Too many people crammed in a house way too small, eating and drinking and opening presents. That’s what Christmas always was growing up, so when we took a few years off, it forced me to rethink new traditions with my wife and kids. Now, we have a nice blend of old traditions and new traditions.

I’m working on a sequel that will pick up at the end of FROM BRICK & DARKNESS. There were a few plot lines I intentionally didn’t wrap up, so the next book will revisit Bax and his friends caught up again in the dangers of the djinn-verse.

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