Jason E Mohler

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Q: Where did the idea for Crown Jewels come from:

A: The short of it is that I needed a story idea by Wednesday. I didn’t actually need one by Wednesday (it was due on a Sunday), but you get the general idea.

 

Now for the long of it. I was working on my Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, and our final thesis was a complete novel-length story. I came up with a good YA science fiction story with a fairly compelling plot, some interesting worldbuilding, and what I hoped was a relatable cast of characters. The characters were talking to me, and I was going great guns until I hit about ten thousand words and realized I hadn’t figured out how to get the two main characters to talk to each other.

 

Yea, just a minor problem.

 

And, of course, that was about two weeks before I had to present my thesis proposal, including a complete plot outline, for review. Crown Jewels had been floating around as one of the dozen or so stories ideas that I’d been considering when I started the program, and it spoke to me, if not as loud as my original.

 

Actually, its opening sentence spoke to me:

 

Jasper was his name, no matter what his papers said.

 

So that’s the why of it, but it doesn’t really talk about where the idea came from. I’d been playing with the idea of a military unit where the members were given code names based on the periodic table, but when the story shifted in my head from science fiction to fantasy, I simplified it to names based on gemstones, instead. From there, the story just blossomed in my head, becoming sort of a fantasy mixture of Starship Troopers and The Hunger Games.

 

The main character, Onyx, was inspired by my own experiences. When I joined the army, it wasn’t out of a sense of patriotism or duty to my country, it was because I was working a minimum-wage job with no insurance, a wife, and a two-year-old child. It was my last option to provide them the life I thought they deserved.

 

I was raised Brethren, which means I was raised a pacifist. Being Brethren, I could have claimed conscientious objector status when I joined, but I put my faith in God; if he wanted me to go to war (this was at the start of the Iraq war), I would go. Apparently, he didn’t, because the closest I came was a couple of years with a CAB in between deployments. Even though, I never saw combat, I was surrounded by the stories of soldiers who’d returned from war, and the sights of the wounded that surrounded me (I was stationed at Fort Sam Houston, home of Brooks Army Medical Center for the first four years of the Iraq war).

 

Onyx’s journey from pacifist to warrior was my own, but without the happy ending.

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Q: Is there a recurring theme in your works? If so, what is it? If not, is there anything that links your stories?

A: If there is, it’s that everyone’s wounded in one way or another, and usually not physically. I have characters with everything from a broken heart to survivor’s guilt, to physical and emotional abuse, to PTSD, and more. In fact, it’s hard to find one of my characters who isn’t, well, screwed up in one way or the other. Well, okay, the characters in The Best Lies aren’t all that screwed up, but still…

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Q: How long does it take to write a story?

A: This one took some thought. I don’t write full time so I have to sneak it in an hour here, an hour there, around the rest of my life, so it's kind of hard to track. The best I can figure out is that I can write about five hundred words an hour when I’m working on a rough draft. A rough draft is only about twenty percent of the work while the other eighty is spent in editing, rewriting, proof reading, and format and design. In the end, it works out to about one hundred words an hour, or about ten hours per every thousand words.
 

Q: Do you have a writing ritual, or different types of writing for different situations?
A: You mean other than turning on your computer and starting writing? I'm not sure if you'd call it a ritual, but I've got what was once our spare bedroom set up as my "Fortress of Solitude." It's where I go to to do my schoolwork and write. My family knows that when I'm in there, it means I'm working and to not disturb me unless it's something important.
 
Q: Are there specific life events that flavor your writing or style?
A: One. In fact, it's why I decided to go for my MFA. My mother was an education professor at the local college for over thirty-five years, and her favorite class to teach was children's lit. When she died a few years ago, I decided that to honor her, I would use part of the inheritance to get my master's and that I'd make my thesis a young adult novel.
 
Q: How do you organize your world-building process?
A: Organize? You obviously haven't seen the Fortress of Solitude. I'm a pantser, so I usually go into my writing with a general idea of things and flesh them out as I go along. That's why the MFA program's been a bit of a struggle for me; we have to have a plot, which means we have to know what's going on. I know that sounds pretty obvious, but when I actually do something, I tend to over-do it. For example, I can tell you the names of all fifty-four of the background characters in my story and if or when they drop out of training, and why.
 
Q: Is writing the focus of your career?
A: No. I'm the IT guy at a local non-profit. I'd love to go pro, but I know what the odds of making an actual living as a novelist is, so I don't plan on giving up my day job as I write and publish. I actually see writing as part of my retirement plan. For starters, it'll give me a way to stay out of trouble and, with a little luck, will give me a little extra spending cash.
 
Q: How do the other careers you’ve had influence the choices you make when facing the task of writing?
A: I think they're a big part of why I'm a pantser. I've spent the past twenty years working in computers and finance and they require such precision and attention to detail that it's nice to just let myself go and see where things take me. At least that's how they affect me as a writer. As for my writing, my time in the army tends to play a big part. It's pretty common for my main characters to suffer from PTSD to some extent, but that's not the only way. I was stationed at Fort Sam Houston during the Iraq War. Fort Sam's the home of Brooke Army Medical Center, which, among other things, is one of the main burn treatment centers for the army. Even though I didn't work at the hospital, I would see the burn victims and amputees and those images stuck with me. Because of that, my stories tend to contain soldiers or warriors who've suffered a serious injury and are trying to find their way through their new reality.

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