Bloggasm

Jenn Reese has been writing speculative fiction since 1995 and blogging about it since 1998. Her short stories have appeared in various anthologies and ‘zines, as well as online at cool places like Strange Horizons. She lives in LA, studies martial arts, and is currently at work on her second novel.

Simon Owens: You’re someone who has had several publications in both online and print venues. Is there one you prefer over the other? Which gives you more reader feedback?

Jenn Reese: I love having stories online at places like Strange Horizons and Lenox Avenue. My friends and family can read them without shelling out money for a book, and if people like my stories, they can email the link or post it in their blogs. There’s a warm glow you get from being a part of the online genre community.

On the other hand, there’s nothing like holding a book in your hand, seeing your name in black type, smelling the glue and hearing the rustle of pages. It’s a high like no other. Call me old fashioned, but I still prefer books.

As for reader feedback, I get the most email from Strange Horizons readers, who are generally, in my experience, also writers. I also get a lot from my appearances in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthology series. Those books are reprinted in several languages, and I’ve received email from readers (who are not writers) in such places as Norway, Germany, and Australia. DAW anthologies seem to reach a vastly different audience than online venues.

SO: You’ve had a series of connected flash fiction pieces running in Strange Horizons for the past year? How did writing these compare to writing a single (longer) short story?

JR: I started my “Tales of Chinese Zodiac” series as a creativity exercise during a deep, dark writing lull. Although I am normally an ardent outliner, I would not allow myself to plan these stories, even one sentence ahead. I never knew how they were going to end when I started them. I tried to surprise myself. I threw out the first few ideas that came to mind and forced myself to find alternatives. I don’t know if I’ve ever had so much fun writing as I did with those tales. Since then, I’ve been using those techniques more and more in my longer fiction.

SO: Does participating in martial arts influence your writing at all?

JR: Martial arts has influenced my life more profoundly than any other activity upon which I’ve embarked, outside of reading and writing.

Of course, I put more martial arts into my stories now. The first novel I wrote was an action-adventure kungfu romance, and I’d love to make it into a series someday. Then there are a whole host of Life Lessons I’ve learned, including big ones about embracing the beginner’s mind, working hard, pushing oneself, finding one’s limits and exceeding them. When I started writing, I wanted to be good right away. When I started martial arts, I was happy to spend an hour working on a simple punch or technique. That alone has taught me how I view the difference between mental and physical skills. I’ve since tried to tear down that distinction in my mind and approach writing with more of a “white belt” mentality.

I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my biggest idols, Bruce Lee: “If you always put a limit on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must
go beyond them.”

SO: What are the five blogs everyone should be reading (besides your own)?

JR: First, people should only be reading my blog if they care just as much about my martial arts adventures and my cats as they do about my thoughts on writing. High-brow entertainment it aiin’t. But I guess that philosophy holds true for the blogs I read, too: I’m more interested in following the lives of people I like–both real-life friends and friends I just know through their journals–than in reading blogs with more controversial or industry-packed content. I do enjoy the latter type of blog, and have occasionally been pulled into a controversy or two, but my online community is generally a personal one.

You can find Jenn’s blog over here.