Author interview with fantasy writer Kristin D. Jackson

Fantasy author Kristin D. Jackson knows the power of a good story—not just to entertain, but to evoke real, visceral emotion. From late-night Stephen King marathons as a teenager to building rich, immersive worlds of her own, Kristin’s path to becoming a writer is one paved with curiosity, creativity, and a deep love for connection. In this interview, she opens up about her writing journey, the themes that guide her work, and the messy, magical process behind crafting stories that resonate. Whether you’re a fellow writer or an avid reader, Kristin’s thoughtful reflections are sure to inspire.

Q: What’s a memory of a story or book that made you realize you wanted to be a writer?
A: Over the summer of my sophomore to junior year of high school, I was up until about 2:30 AM most nights reading a Stephen King novel called, It. My twin sister and I had to share a room growing up, so it wasn’t unusual for one of us to be up when the other went to sleep. One specific night, though, I was so scared out of my mind, even with my reading light on, that I had to wake her up so I didn’t feel alone. (She was actually nice about it, too!) I was surprised by the visceral reactions and deep emotions I’ve experienced while reading a good story. I remember that night, just as a passing thought, wondering if I would ever be able to create something that evokes emotion the way I’ve experienced from other writers.

Q: What’s one writing habit you can’t live without and one you wish you could break?
A: I love to set the scene just as much for myself as for my characters. For me to have a truly fruitful writing session, I need to be dressed comfy, have plenty of water, and no distractions. I like to have at least a two-three hour window to really allow myself to fall into my writing. Sometimes, I’ll play video game soundtracks as background sound, but oftentimes, I surprise myself by becoming aware that I’ve been working for hours in absolute silence, other than the satisfying clacking coming from my keyboard.

I’m a bit ashamed about this one as I used to teach the writing process as a Language Arts teacher, however, one of my writing habits that I would love to break is how I approach prewriting. My approach is to write down my little ideas that randomly come to me in some arbitrary notebook, sticky note, or loose-leaf paper. If I don’t write it down, I know it’ll slip from my mind. As a result, consolidating all of my notes for one story when I’m feeling like I want to sit down and write can get cumbersome due to my lack of organization, especially when I’m running into a bunch of other little notes for short stories and other novel ideas on the backburner of my mind.

My prewriting is a mess, literally as well as figuratively. I understand it, but I don’t know if anyone else would be able to make sense of my scribbles and notes to myself. I’ve had excellent suggestions about keeping notes on my phone, which I do, but I haven’t found it to be as useful for me personally in my writing endeavors. Honestly, having to take the time to consolidate, review, and reorganize all my notes forces me to continue to review my ideas, characters, plot, and dialogue moments. It’s almost like organizing these physical notes helps me organize my own thoughts.

Q: Do you have your own circle of writer friends? If so, what other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer?
A: I wish I had a current circle of writer friends! More often than not, I find myself with people who are either neutral to writing or strongly dislike the action of having to write. That makes me sad as I’ve always looked at writing as an opportunity. The closest I’ve gotten to having a circle of writer friends was during the Illinois State Writing Project, which I participated in twice, in 2019 as well as 2020, while I was pursuing my Master’s degree at Illinois State.

For a few weeks over those two summers, I was surrounded by educators who wanted to write for scholarship, lesson-planning, research, and for fun! We had an exercise called, “Writing into the Day,” as a thought and writing exercise, and it brought us closer as a group as we took turns leading and learning from one another from our teaching demonstrations to our research projects. It was so satisfying for me to be surrounded by people who understood what writing can do, run ideas by each other, have writing sessions, and show off our efforts. It taught me about how others handle their own struggles in writing as well as triumphs.

We had deep moments of reflection and transparency about who we all were, not just as writers and educators, but as people. It’s through these interactions where I finally found the confidence in myself, even as a teacher who taught writing, to finally allow myself to confidently and happily share with others, “I am a writer.”

Q: What themes do you find yourself returning to again and again in your work?
A: In my own creative works, I’ve found myself repeatedly writing on the feeling of being seen as “The Other.” This is a theme I specifically write about due to having a medieval studies course with Dr. Susan Kim at Illinois State which included texts that focused on the hesitancy people can have when it comes to something or someone being labeled as ‘other’ or different. It’s an experience that’s very human and, at the same time, isolating. I think this is a feeling that everyone has experienced at one point or another, and that shared experience within my short stories and novels highlight the different ways we all experience that uncomfortable feeling.

This ties in the need to bring in stories that share these uncomfortable experiences for relatability and as a means of communicating the need to feel included within our own lives. I think, for a long time, we’ve continued to see people who identify people from different backgrounds as “The Other.” I want to show that as an opportunity to learn about people, including our own selves, to check our own implicit biases. Our shared experiences and emotions that coincide with those experiences can show that we all have a great deal more in common than what we might initially think.

Q: Do you have any rituals or routines to help you transition into “writer mode”?
A: I’m a creature of habit. I thrive off of structure and routine. As soon as writing isn’t a part of my routine, I put it on the chopping block, sadly. As responsibilities pile up, I find I have less time to dedicate to one of my favorite crafts. At times, I struggle to allow myself time to write when I have different roles I need to play to continue leading a healthy life and maintain a sustainable work/life balance of social time for others and time for myself to recharge.

I find that the busier I am, the more I thrive because I have to force myself to have more structure to be successful. This structure helps me maintain the discipline to sit down and write consistently. I anticipate with the beginning of my PhD program this fall, I’m hoping I’ll somehow still be able to make time to write with how structured and disciplined I’ll have to be.

Q: Have you ever had to cut a scene or character you loved? How did you handle it?
A: I had to revamp an entire story once, and it left me borderline devastated at the amount of time I felt I wasted. This ended up being about a 30-page short story about a heterosexual couple going through a difficult pregnancy and struggling with fertility. This was one of my earlier short stories, while I was still attending Parkland College, and I hadn’t really gotten the hang of how I want to approach my stories. I just sort of dove in head-first without thinking. (What a rookie mistake on my part.) I was about 20 pages into this story, when it hit me. I had been writing through the wrong character’s perspective this entire time.

I was writing through the husband’s perspective when I realized that the pregnancy was being experienced by my other character, Ophelia. Why was I telling the story through a different character if the plot was focusing on this difficult pregnancy? I sat there, staring at all of my work I had completed, just knowing that I had to rework the entire thing because I wanted this to be a story written in first-person.

Well, I did it, and you know what? I’m glad I took the time because it made for a better story. I was still able to keep the events of the story I wanted to tell, but I still had to shift perspectives which made me take pages and pages of composition, reference it, and essentially rewrite them through Ophelia’s perspective instead.

This was an incredible amount of work when I didn’t necessarily need to do it. No one was telling me to change the perspective. I changed it because I knew it was for the betterment of the story I wanted to tell. It was about respect for myself as well as the story. Still a lot of work, but it made me a better writer and a better writing teacher.

As one may imagine, I take a considerable amount of time now in thinking about who is narrating the story and what purpose that narrator serves. Is first-person the best way to tell this story or should I look more at third-person limited or omniscient in this instance? If I’m going with first-person, which character is going to have the best story to tell? These decisions absolutely matter. It’s amazing how one simple mistake in one piece of writing from the past can have a whole developmental shift in how one approaches their writing. Even thinking back on this experience now still stings, but I’m glad I made this error as it’s only served me in making me think on how to best approach my writing.

Q: What do you wish readers understood better about the writing or publishing process?
A: I think there are a great many people who think that the publishing process is straightforward when it’s not. Anytime I’ve tried to obtain a literary agent to get a novel picked up, I feel like it’s a whole new job. Taking the time to research the publishing agencies for credibility, identifying which of those agents you would like to query, writing a query letter that is specific to that agent, providing writing samples, having a biography ready, submitting the information in the correct way – it all gets to be a lot.

I found that I have to, essentially, sell the idea of my novel, when I’m more of a person that wants to write for fun. I’m not writing necessarily for the public. I’m writing for myself. As soon as I get into the weeds of having to think about publication and selling, I struggle to maintain the motivation. You learn to develop a thick skin when it comes to rejections, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was giddy when I one time receive constructive feedback from a specific publication house over a generalized rejection letter. I encourage all writers to persevere.

Q: What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?
A: I’m going to go off-road for this one and answer with the epic story of One Piece, a Japanese manga still currently being written and illustrated by Eichiro Oda. My husband, Thomas, introduced me to it as he’s been a reader since middle school. I finally decided to take the plunge and begin this intense, 1,000+ chapter story. I am not at all being hyperbolic when I say there is long-term emotional payoff from taking the time to dedicate yourself to enjoying this story. I want to shout it from the rooftops!

I think many people can be dismissive to One Piece due to how intimidatingly long it is. With it also being an anime series, it can be identified as cartoony-looking, which it is. That’s not a bad thing, though. I think it makes for a better story because you’re not expecting to be so emotionally invested until you’re in too deep. I think kids and adults can get a lot from the story. No matter how dark the world gets with slavery, war, corruption, and genocide, One Piece always finds a spark of hope in a hopeless situation.

The tone is never nihilistic which I find to be refreshing. It tells us how the world can be a broken place, but we can still have moments for laughter, finding friends who feel like family, and fighting for what matters. I’ve finished arcs within the story that have left me emotionally devastated, and I mean that in the best way possible. The highs in this story are peak, euphoric moments that I’m sharing with these characters and other One Piece fans.

One Piece is meaningful because Oda makes the reader care. He’s built a world that reflects real human pain, hope, and resilience. He respects the emotional investment in his story and his audience’s emotional investment in it. It’s hard to say if we will ever see another author like him ever again. I want to encourage any reader to join me in this story about connections, dreams, and the cost of freedom.

Q: If you could live in the world of one of your books for a day, which would it be and why?
A: As someone who dove headfirst into anything fantasy related as a kid, it’s hard not to immediately answer with Lost Souls: The Caves of Oriana. That story first began because I wanted to write a mini D&D campaign for a bachelorette party for my best friend. I had the entire thing sort of outlined, and then we pivoted away from doing that for the party.

When I expressed that I had so much already created, my sister suggested, not unkindly, “Why don’t you just write a book, then?” It was like a switch flipped. Getting lost in this novel as I wrote felt so fun! Friendship. Adventure. Magic. What’s not to like? (Probably the monsters within the cave.)

Q: What’s one thing you hope readers take away from your latest book?
A: We all have incredibly busy lives and sometimes we forget to be kind to ourselves in the process. In Switch Sight, the protagonist, Terra, is particularly hard on herself. I think it’s important to find balance and practice self compassion while continuing to maintain the meaningful connections we have; and be open to creating additional, deeper connections with those around you. Terra’s deep connection to her friends, Maddix and Rowan, is what makes this novel especially meaningful to me.

Kristin’s first novel, Lost Souls: The Caves of Oriana, was published in 2023. One of Kristin’s goals was to complete her second novel before beginning her PhD program in Higher Education Administration. This resulted in her second novel, Switch Sight, being published in 2025. Kristin lives in central Illinois with her husband, Thomas, and their two cats, Cloud and Sky.

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