We were lucky to catch up with Jasyn Turley recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jasyn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

The risk I took was when I decided to go the Self-Publishing route. You see more if not everything falls on the Indie Author when doing this: format, professional edit, cover design, etcetera. Yes, these things can be commissioned to other parties. I do not know what costs come from going the traditional publishing route, I am sure they exist. I can only speak from my experience as an indie author. The risks aren’t just shouldering the need to produce a professional book. The financial costs add up and become an extra burden on your personal expenses. In addition to rent/mortgage, car payments, insurance, gas, groceries, and on and on. Again, I don’t know if this is experienced by Traditionally Published Authors. The risk here is something any small business owner can relate to, and strive for. the short-term struggle for long-term reward. But it’s a double-edged sword, isn’t it? Not only is it a risk, but a gamble.

I wanted to say this for the unpublished authors out there who want to be published but aren’t sure, or scared (like I was) to take this gamble and risk. I’ve published three books so far and am working on my fourth. The return hasn’t come yet, and it may not. You don’t do it for the money, despite how stressful finances are, you do it because you want to. Without writing, I feel like a bird whose wings have been clipped, all I would want to do is fly.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

There isn’t much to tell about myself. I’m blue-collar, want to live and let live in peace, and trying to enjoy this life I’ve been given. But how did I get into this industry? There’s something of a story. I started writing when I was 14 years old, the summer before my sophomore year of high school. The books I published called WEEKS was just a game back then. Myself, my brother, and our friend Katie played. On car rides, at the park and back yard, multiplayer on video games, and so on. It became an obsession for me. On a car ride to Colorado Springs in the back of my momma’s Ford Windstar, I decided putting this “game” of ours onto paper in a narrative would help ease this obsession of mine. What it did instead, was plant seeds of a love for literature. Back then I hated books and reading. But writing came naturally, despite how bad I was at it as a kid.
Things just took a snowball effect from there, until WEEKS was more than a game. It was a story, one of struggle and adversity. Kept close to my heart and soul.

Now that I dipped my toes into the waters of the publishing world back in 2020 with my first novel, ‘WEEKS Book One’. I’ve been looking at other ways to grow and things to offer. For the reader and/or writer. I don’t want to be set apart from others in my field, rather I want to be a part of the writer/reader community. I want to nerd out on things like Lord of the Rings and Resident Evil with fellow fans; just as badly, I want to create something special enough that people nerd out on my stories just the same. I’ve met a good friend and fellow author, and we’ve been working and networking together.

I am proud of how far I have come, and there is still far yet to travel. A part of my faith, is to enjoy the present, that contrast’s the need, and pressure (when comparing myself to other authors) to do more and more. Life is a gift, and it is important to enjoy it; that was how ‘WEEKS’ came into being.

When it comes down to it, I’ve come to realize that I am passionate about stories. I hold in high regard Tolkien and Lewis’s teachings, philosophy, and theology. There is something transcending about stories, something near and dear to the human soul. When you’ve escaped the four walls of the prison of materialism and into the great beyond of fictional worlds. There is a sense of glee, of joy. I want that for my readers.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Sometimes resilience is just holding on, enduring the storm. Perseverance isn’t easy, and it hurts. I’ve been through ruts where it feels like all the creative energy and glee have run dry. Perhaps it did. It came from a place of ‘burnout’. Full-time work and college can do that for creative endeavors. I say this because I’ve recently learned that this place of burnout and depletion happens in waves, and seasons in life. Because so many people feel it, and it is an exceptional killer of dreams and creative energy.

I’ve been struggling with this lately. Hindsight is supposed to be twenty-twenty right? So, I know that in the past, that depletion and lacking energy were only temporary. My faith holds to a God of restoration, and to the believer and unbeliever alike it is coming. If you feel burnt out with life, lacking creative energy, and the crippling depression that comes with it. I want to encourage you to hold on. Restoration is coming. Just because a fuel tank gets empty doesn’t mean it can’t be refilled. Then there is the philosophy of “writing isn’t hard, sitting down to write is hard.” What I’ve found is many times when I sit down and begin to work on my craft, it’s like there is still a bit of fuel left.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I remember this video I watched, from a self-published author giving out advice she felt was valuable. It was a lot of what she spoke about I took to heart. Some of it, a little too much, to the point where I became dogmatic with said advice. She spoke about an anchor series, if you set out to tell stories in a series the advice was to finish that series before branching out. While it can be good advice, and I’ve heard this advice from other sources, what I didn’t take into account was that you can’t put too many restrictions on creativity.

Put simply, there are a great many other projects I have in store other than the ‘WEEKS Series.’ But I took this advice too seriously. I made it a rule, that I couldn’t and wouldn’t work on anything else, even when inspiration struck at these other projects and not WEEKS. I found myself working on a project when I wanted to work on a different one.

What broke this dogmatism for me was thinking about Steven King and his Dark Tower Series. While I am overly simplifying things, what I realized was that he wasn’t working on the next Dark Tower book right after the previous one. This series of his came with several other stories and books in between each Dark Tower book.

What I am saying is that structure and rules are indeed helpful. They should be considered and remembered, but they are not the end all be all. “They’re more like guidelines as to oppose to actual rules, ” to quote Captain Barbosa.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://turleybookinn.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turleybookinn/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JayFiction
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/turleybookinn
• Other: https://www.goodreads.com/j_t_turley

Image Credits
Author Photograph professionally done by Megan Teeuwen, of ‘Megnificent Designs & Photography’ Book covers are made by Jelena Gajic [you can find her at 99designs, or email her at [email protected]]