By now, you may have noticed that I met some pretty cool people at the ZappCon event in Fresno a couple of weeks ago. (For those who don't know, ZappCon is a rather large convention where lovers of fictional lore and memorabilia converge to discuss their shared nerdiness, of which apparently I am a part of...)
One of those people was J.D. Nelson, a writer of swoon worthy romance tales. She owns a small publishing house and has published four books so far, with more releases on the way. Her books have plenty of adventure, lots of steam and a good dose of fantasy. Check out what she had to say about living in California and writing those love interests that are simply to die for! You live in the Central Valley of California (just like me!). What was it like moving from Mobile, Alabama, to San Francisco, and then to the Central Valley?There was definitely a bit of culture shock involved in moving to the Bay Area, however, it really wasn’t that bad. I know most people think of Alabama as a backwoods kind of a state, but I’m from a city with a population of about 500,000 people, so it wasn’t as overwhelming as I thought it would be. Moving to the Central Valley was a little harder. Although Mobile was hot and humid, the valley is almost unbearably hot! It makes me long for rainy afternoons and shade trees.
How did you being your writing journey? In 2009, I fell ill and was out of work for nearly a month. During that time, I bought a Kindle and read everything I could get my hands on. One of the first authors I read was PC Cast. Her Goddess books are amazing. I wrote her an email to that effect, and she immediately returned the correspondence. In her email, she mentioned how eloquently worded my email was and thanked me for writing. After my shock, I started thinking about her words and decided that if she thought I was a good writer, then maybe others would, too. Three years later, I published Night Aberrations.
How many books have you published so far? I’ve published four books but have written many more. The finished novels are lined up to be published every three or four months until 2017. If someone were to ask you what the secret to writing a great romance novel is, what would you tell them? I think to make a romance great, you have to have a bit of experience in romance. It’s sort of like how a doctor has to go to medical school. You have to know what you’re doing to write those steamy scenes!
You own Chaste Moon Publishing. Tell us a little about that. Chaste Moon started out as a name to put on self-published books that wasn’t my own. I thought it sounded more professional than just my name or having Amazon or Barnes, Smashwords, or
Noble as the publisher. But that was so three years ago! Things have changed quite a bit over the past year.In August, we hired a professional editor to start doing edits and proofreading for aspiring authors and will soon start publishing their books. Hopefully, this is will be an exciting new chapter (no pun intended) in expanding our business!
Just for fun, please tell us about your four cats who think they're dogs! I have three boys and one girl, all rescue animals. Checkers, our oldest, is a big fat love bug. He turned fourteen in June. Sadie Mae is next oldest at thirteen and a half. She’s very ill, but still a sassy thing that loves to be loved. Coonie is five and probably the craftiest cat I’ve ever seen. He’s smart, clever, and a little bit evil. Cat Sajak is our newest addition. He turns one next month and is only interested in one thing—playing! They drive us crazy, but I don’t know what we’d do without them meeting us at the door when we come in to demand our immediate attention.
You also attended ZappCon in October, in Fresno, California. What was that like? Fun! It was great to see all the costumes and meet interesting, like-minded people. I think my favorite part of the whole conference was the impromptu dance party the last thirty minutes before closing. Seeing Spiderman break it down to Uptown Funk has a way of sticking with you!Any upcoming releases scheduled or appearances? The second book in the Wicked Ways Series will be releasing on November 15th, but my next appearance isn’t until April at the Roanoke Author Invasion in Roanoke, Virginia. After that, I’m hoping to attend ModestoCon in July.
Where can we connect with you online?
JD Nelson's Official Website - www.authorjdnelson.com (You can find all the buy links here)
JD Nelson's Goodreads Page - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6060770.J_D_Nelson
JD Nelson's Facebook Fan Page - www.facebook.com/JDNelsonsNightAberrations
JD Nelson's Super Secret Fan Club - http://www.facebook.com/groups/269730583130725/
JD Nelson's Blog - www.nightaberrations.blogspot.com/
JD Nelson's BookLikes - http://booklikes.com/j-d-nelson/author,2824672
JD Nelson's tsū - https://www.tsu.co/JDNelson
JD Nelson's Twitter - https://twitter.com/authorjdnelson
JD Nelson's Ello - https://ello.co/authorjdnelson
Thank you so much for visiting with us! Happy writing!
About the Author
JD Nelson is a Bestselling Author of Fantasy Romance and Erotic Paranormal Romance. She is also the owner of Chaste Moon Publishing, an independent publishing house. A transplant from Mobile, Alabama, she gave up Mardi Gras and frequent hurricanes to move to the earthquake capital of the United States, the San Francisco Bay Area. She now lives in Central Valley, California with her amazingly supportive husband and four cats who think they're dogs.
Always short on time, JD has long ago mastered the art of procrastination and was recently crowned Procrastinator of the Year by her editor, which is only slightly better than her being voted Most Likely to Waste Time by Watching Vampire Movies by her readers last year. All jokes aside, JD is a boringly normal person who thinks that coffee pretty much fixes everything ... as long as it's before 6:30AM and the planet Mars is in retrograde. When she's not spending time with her sexy Swedish husband, you can find her writing, reading, or on her commute to her day job where she wrangles paint onto canvas for the entertainment industry.
JD loves to hear from her readers. You can contact her through her website, AuthorJDNelson.com, or on Facebook, where she spends an alarming amount of time chatting to her many author and reader friends, much to the dismay of her continually neglected manuscripts.
