What initially drew you to write for young people?
I was a middle and high school teacher, so that’s what drew me initially. Later, it was more creating stories I wish I’d had in high school.
Please tell us about your process as a writer.
My process varies drastically from project. If I start with a character - then I spend a lot of time pondering on that character, what they need to learn, how to angle the plot pieces to try them and give them the most amount of growth. If I start with an idea (example: a what if question) then I focus on idea first until I have that fleshed out and then I build the kind of character who would grow the most given that circumstance.
When I sit down to write, I generally draft pretty quickly, and then I let the project sit for a long time (a few weeks if I’m on deadline, more than a year if I’m not).
What message(s) do you want to share as a writer?
Writing and reading is all about experience. We read the stories that intrigue us and we write the same. Once a book of mine has been published, it no longer belongs to me - it belongs to the people who read it who will take what they want out of that experience.
Please tell us about Hopeless for Beckett and any other projects you'd like to share about.
Hopeless for Beckett I wrote on a whim because I needed to write something FUN. That’s always the case when I write romance. At the moment, I’m finishing another fun project - a Rapunzel retelling that will be part of an anthology called Once Upon a Fairytale to benefit the Magic Yarn project that makes wigs for children in hospitals. My next project is a horror that takes place in southeast Alaska - so I write all over the place in terms of genre.
Where can we learn more about your work?
If you’d like to have more info on writing, follow me on TikTok, @jrv_perry and if you’d like to see more of my own work and day to day stuff, that same username but on Instagram.
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