Mug Shot: Jen Conley

Jen Conley‘s short stories have appeared in Thuglit, Needle, Crime Factory, Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen, and many others. She has contributed to the Los Angeles Review of Books and is one of editors of Shotgun Honey. Her story collection, Cannibals: Stories from the Edge of the Pine Barrens is available now.

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Tell us about your latest project.
Last May my first book was published, a collection of crime stories that take place in one the more rural areas of New Jersey, the Pine Barrens.

When and how do you find time to write?
Whenever I can find it. I teach middle school and I’m a mom, so my writing time is limited. I am off in the summer, so I tend to write a lot then, or I try to. It’s funny — when having large blocks of time to write sometimes gives me writer’s block. As for the school year, I write Saturday mornings and afternoons and during the week, usually I write for a bit at night before I go to bed.

How much and what kinds of marketing do you personally do?
I have a website, which I think every author needs these days. People need a place to find you. I think Twitter is an excellent source for writers, although I find Twitter very fast and you need to be sharp to be a decent tweeter. I’m pretty quiet on Twitter but I use it to promote my writing or if I’m hosting a Noir at the Bar. I use Facebook the most. It seems to be the right pace for me and I think it’s been the main source of getting the word out that I have a book.

What fictional detective would you like to be and why?
I don’t know about fictional detective but I think I’d like to be Sam Gerard in The Fugitive. Or I want to be Tommy Lee Jones as Sam Gerard in The Fugitive.

In five words or less, what advice would you give to aspiring writers?
“Don’t write until you’re 30.”

I stole that from Annie Proulx, who said don’t write until you’re 50. Of course, it’s not meant to be taken literally, but the idea of it makes sense. I think young writers should be writing, but it’s more important to read and watch films and good television, maybe take an acting class, read more, and you also have to live — go somewhere different, work different jobs, listen to people of all walks of life . . . and read even more. All of this will help a writer figure out their writing style, the life themes they’ll be writing about. I also think your 20s are the time to explore, and your 30s can be your time to reflect. This is all very hippy-dippy, and I’m more of a cynical northeast woman, but I know a lot of writers and most of them seem to have gotten serious about their writing when they were in their 30s.

The other reason to go out and live, is because you need to figure out how you feel about the world. If you don’t have your own take on the world, as a writer, you don’t have a personal authentic view of the world, and you end up mimicking. I can only speak for myself, by as a reader, I want something from the writer, some bit of empathy, a glimpse into how they see the world. If you don’t know how you see the world, you will mimic someone else’s view, and you won’t move anyone doing that. Even in genre writing you have to come at it with your own take.

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