I have made an extremely important discovery.
Light from DEATH NOTE…
…is really Justin Bieber.
Archive for the ‘Just Jax’ Category
Secret Identity
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010More about HUNGER in new interview
Sunday, June 20th, 2010So you probably know I have an alter ego as Jackie Kessler, novelist for adults. I had the opportunity to chat with Jackie Morgan from Literary Escapism during the RT 2010 convention, and during the interview I talked a lot about HUNGER and the world of the Riders’ Quartet. (Yeah, that’s what I’m calling the Horsemen books. I like it. Has a nice ring to it.)
We talked about my adult series too, and why I went with a slightly different name for my young adult books. But I thought you might be interested in reading more about HUNGER and the Riders. And hey, if you’re into superheroes, my second superhero novel, SHADES OF GRAY (coauthored with Caitlin Kittredge), hits the shelves Tuesday, June 22, 2010 here in the US and in Canada. SHADES OF GRAY, like the first book, BLACK AND WHITE, is dystopian. Think Frank Miller’s THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, or Alan Moore’s WATCHMEN, or Neil Gaiman’s SANDMAN.
The interview is here.
If you want to preorder HUNGER, you can do that here, here and here (among other places).
If you want to preorder SHADES OF GRAY, you can do that here, here and here (ditto the among other places).
And another interview, this one talking more about SHADES OF GRAY, is here.
Both interviews have contests to win a copy of the first superhero book, BLACK AND WHITE. 
Gonna Make A Playlist
Friday, March 12th, 2010My cousin died this week. She’d had cancer, both years ago and then again more recently, and this time, there was no escaping the final outcome. I went to her funeral yesterday, and I listened to the rabbi talk about my cousin, and heard her son deliver a powerful eulogy. He said that my cousin was defined by pain and pride — one was etched into every fiber of her being, and the other was how she fiercely took pleasure from the accomplishments of her loved ones. Her son is a college student, but as he spoke about his mom, and helped his grandmother stand strong in the face of burying a child, it hit me that he had been forced to grow up much too soon.
Parents shouldn’t have to bury their kids.
Kids shouldn’t have to juggle college classes around their mother’s funeral.
~
ME: Sometimes, life seems horribly unfair.
DEATH: Life isn’t unfair. Life simply is. It’s people who go about trying to pigeonhole the vastness of life into some preconceived notion. You should stop that.
ME: Pfft. Easy for you to say. You’re Death. You don’t have just a handful of years to try to make sense out of everything.
DEATH: You think being eternal means you can actually make sense out of things? T’y'ah. As if.
ME: So if there’s no right answer — if some things never make sense, like someone dying too soon — then…why are we here?
DEATH: That’s easy. You’re here to live, for as long as you’re alive.
ME: That’s it?
DEATH: That’s it. What you do with your life is your choice. Sure, some things will be outside of your control. Disease, for example. I mean, yeah, you can do things that make it more likely you’re going to get sick, but whether or not you actually get sick, well, that’s not your call. It’s not how long you live, but how well.
ME: Sometimes, things still seem horribly unfair.
DEATH: Again, you’re trying to shoehorn life into neat categories. Fair, unfair, deserved, lucky. What have you. That’s not what it’s about. Life is about living. Everything else is just how you label it. And as a wise person once said, labels are for soup cans.
ME: Huh. Maybe. Still, I’m feeling lousy about it.
DEATH: You know what helps?
ME: What?
DEATH: Listening to some fabulous music.
~
This would have been a different conversation if it had been Pestilence instead of Death. For one thing, Pestilence doesn’t appreciate good music.
So now I’m making a Life Can Be Lousy But At Least I Have Good Music playlist. I’m open to suggestions.
Happy Birthday to Me
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009My birthday is here! Cake for breakfast and happiness all around! Here’s wishing everyone a marvelous, magical day.
A new Post Mortem is on its way — stay tuned!
Interviewed!
Monday, November 16th, 2009I was interviewed at The Book Resort! Come see!
Thanks, Diane!
Is This Thing On?
Thursday, September 17th, 2009Hi, I’m Jackie Morse Kessler. I write stuff. My novel HUNGER will hit the shelves in fall 2010, which feels like a really, really long time from now. But hey, by then Lost will be over. (Great, now I just made myself sad. Where’s the chocolate?)
So. Let’s see. What to put in my debut blog post?
Okay.
Some things about me, in no particular order:
I am short. Like, really short. Like, you’re probably taller than me. I used to think I was five feet tall. But then I went for my physical exam, and either the RN was being evil or I’ve shrunk. Now I’m 4′11.5″. On the plus side, people tend to grab stuff off the high shelves for me in stores. (On the minus side, my pants are too long.)
I am a New Yorker. I was born in Brooklyn, worked in Manhattan, and now I live upstate. (Yes, I’m still allowed to call myself a New Yorker. It’s in the rules.) I come into NYC often; sometimes it’s for work–my agent and my publisher are in the city–but other times, it’s because NYC is a lot of fun.
I have a lot of comic books. Used to have 9,000 of them, but then our basement flooded. I had to pitch a lot. I cried. Favorite comic series: Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. I don’t collect them anymore, but I keep drifting by my local comic shop. I might start up again soon. Might. Maybe.
I read a lot. A lot. Right now, I’m reading Gena Showalter’s Intertwined and Gregory Maguire’s Son of a Witch. I have about 200 books that are waiting to be read. The next book will be Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. In a perfect world, I’d sit around all day, writing, reading, and eating chocolate.
That’s it for now. (Can’t tell you too much about me in the first post; I’d run out of material to talk about in a week.) The next blog post will talk more about HUNGER, and what Post Mortem is all about. Hope your September is going great!
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