JLB Creatives: April 6, 2014

Monday, April 7, 2014

Meet Author Stephen King

Hello - and welcome to the JLB Creatives Blog. We hope your week is going well, and you're ready to discover another awesome author. This week we bring you author Stephen King.

His post is short but sweet - and we're certain you'll become an instant fan when you read what he has to say about his life and his writing...

Author Stephen King

The Southern Influence

“You can take a boy out of the South,” they say, “but you can’t take the South out of the boy.”

They’re right, you know. I’m evidence of that, I claim, as I sit, write, and munch on a snack that is about as stereo-typically southern as they get: boiled peanuts. In fact, once upon a time, doing one of my writing gigs up in Alaska, I introduced my boss to the pleasure of the soft, salty orbs, and he became hooked. That was unfortunate, because the snack was pretty much impossible to purchase up there; you had to boil your own raw peanuts for hours.

But, yeah, that’s me. I grew up in a small town in Mississippi, and part of me has never left. Granted, my southern accent was beaten out of me in high school in California, and in the years since, my military experience and my later travels took me around the world. I’m still, though, a Southern Boy at heart.

The influence shows up in my writing. My first series, consisting of four books so far and another due out this fall, is about a woman who finds out one day that she’s married to Ares, the god of war. Oops, there’s something I forgot to tell you, honey…. She also learns that Aphrodite, his ex-wife, wants him back. It’s a fun series of adventures set around the world, even inside an active volcano, but I couldn’t help making the god of war’s favorite snack one of my all-time favorite vegetables: fried okra. And yes, okra is still a veggie to me even after you deep fry it.

My latest work, the first installment of which is due out March 15^th, is southern through and through. It’s a tale of a Mississippi girl who learns that she’s the daughter of the elf king, and thus is, based on a weird elf tradition, next in line to be queen. What follows is a lightly-told sequence of adventures in the fantasy world of Kiirajanna, one that is full of dashing love interests, dangerous and beautiful fairy tale beasts, and a whole mess of heart-blessing.

Now to get back to work on the second installment of that series; hope you enjoy the first.

See y'all later!