Author In the Spotlight: Interview with Jessie Lane

Interview with Jessie Lane

1. You are two women writing under one name, tell us about your selves.

I’m Melissa, and that’s Crystal, we are actually sister-in-laws. Crystal is married to one of my brothers, but we are friends too, so this works out great for us. We are considered the loud and crazy girls of our family, or in our words Rock-Chicks.

2. You are writing under the name ´Jessie Lane´, how come?

Well, we definitely wanted to write as a team and thought the idea of a pen name or pseudo name would be fun. Plus we both got to choose a name that we liked and see how they fit together. I picked ‘Jessie’ from the Anne Rice novel ‘The Queen of the Damned’. Jessie is one of my favorite characters and Crystal chose ‘Lane’ from Karen Marie Moning’s ‘Fever Series’ that has her favorite female lead character MacKayla ‘Mac’ Lane.

3. Why did you decide to write together?

I think it was for each of our sanity’s that we decided to write together. We have a lot in common in our writing styles, and we balance each other out. Crystal has a serious and romantic sides to her writing and while mine is more humor and horror.

4. Pros and cons about writing as a team?

I think the distance and time zones are our biggest enemies at the moment. So face to face talks are rare, and phone calls are hit and miss, but we have email so we work it out and texting. Most of which are hilarious in themselves. We should seriously post them so our readers can actually see the bantering we do.

5. Is there anything you can´t be without when you are writing?

I have to have coffee and music. And lately I have added Twizzlers in the mix.

6. How did you come up with the idea of ´The Burning Star´?

Crystal woke up one night from one of her infamous crazy dreams and decided to write it all down. My brother tells me that she woke him up in the process of it, and he threatened to have her locked up in a padded room with all the other crazy wives of the world, but she essentially ignored him and kept writing.

7. Tell our readers why they should read this series?

It’s a different take on the paranormal world. Mythology is mixed in to help explain ‘history’ as we wrote it.

8. Do you know how this series will end?

We have an idea of how many books we want and a general idea of each one. But we may add more into it and expand on some of the other characters. For now, we are continuing with all the female ‘Main Characters’, and basing the stories around them. Interweaving with the first book. The series will be at least 3 main books, after that we will see where our imaginations lead us.

9. Last but not least, do you have any tips for aspiring authors?

Take all criticism in stride. Learn from it, and better yourself and your writing. Not everyone will like what you wrote, but that doesn’t make you any less a writer. Be proud of what you did because not everyone can do it.

Thank you so much for being with us today and answering our questions.

Thank you for having us on your fabulous blog Cecilia and Sandra! You girls are totally made of awesome-sauce!