Featured Interview With J.M. Beal
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Kansas City and raised in a small town about an hour and a half further south. After Kansas I basked in the multitude amusements of living in Minnesota, before we moved to the east coast. Around then I gave birth to a small human-in-training. We have three cats who’ve been forced to live all these places with us, and a hamster who seems confused about our lack of respect for his ferocity.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I was an early reader, probably out of boredom. Books were always an escape, and I read my favorites over and over again.
I happily took creative writing classes in high school and college, but I didn’t consider writing as a career path until after school. I plotted my first full novel then and started writing it a chapter at a time on bits of paper or stashed notebooks while I worked retail. That first book was all badly planned surprise plot twists and epic sword fights and it will probably never again see the light of day.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I have so many favorites it’s hard to pick a place to start. I love the classics, like Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. I love mysteries, like Lilian Jackson Braun and Susan Wittig Albert. Jurassic Park will forever hold a special place in my heart, along with anything by John Scalzi. I spent a lot of time in my twenties reading Sherrilyn Kenyon, or Lynn Kurland, or Stephanie Laurens and I still go back there from time to time.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
In October of 2010 I was languishing, trying to find something to write for NaNoWriMo. By the twenty-fifth I still hadn’t come up with anything I was interested in. It was crunch time, and I was going to have to pick something, even if it was something I was fairly sure was going to fail.
In August I’d been working on another project, and a character had gotten unhelpfully specific about his favorite book. To the point of outlining part of the plot and reading the first page aloud. And in my desperation I looked at that and said “sure, why not. At least it’s a plot.”
Thirty days later I’d forcefully driven Orion Bartleby through the most ridiculous, unhelpful twenty-some chapters of his life. I’d introduced him to new people–people who valued him even if he still had a hard time valuing himself–and given him a purpose he didn’t want even a little. I’d made him belt up and save the world, even if he was going to complain every step of the way.
What Orion wants is a simple life in a tiny town on a backwater planet where nobody expects anything from him.
Instead he meets the girl of his dreams and gets handed a crappy quest to save the world.
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