We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jess Anderson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jess, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

When I was child I always enjoyed storytelling. It was one of my biggest forms of expression. I would enter writing contests with short stories, create 200 page stories for my teachers and friends to read, and created complex worlds in my notebooks during study hall. When I was around 12 years old, I started thinking about the world of Novus Aitus that my scifi/fantasy series takes place in and as the years went on I expanded the universe with more and more characters. Honestly, creating the world of Novus Aitus and characters was my way of coping with a difficult childhood and my teenage years. Daydreaming in class about these super cool, magical characters who found themselves having to save the world was much more entertaining to me than studying or listening to the same lecture on long division for the 10th time. After I graduated high school, I kind of let the world I created fall to the side and focused more on reality. That was until I took a class in graduate school for my film degree. It was in a class about developing story ideas to pitch to movie producers and I chose to pull a couple of my characters from Novus Aitus off the back burner and pitch a story to my professor and fellow classmates. My professor at the time found the world and the characters super interesting and told me I should write the story down because he’d love to read it. That’s exactly what I did and here I am working on self-publishing my own series of books based on those characters.

Jess, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a self-published author of the Keepers Series which currently consists of the novels Mercy’s Light and Mercy’s Reign and content creator with over 2 million followers online. Writing and telling stories was something I had been passionate about since I was a child. I am self-taught in more ways than one and have figured out my strengths and weaknesses throughout the years. Finding my writing style and content niche was never an easy task and while I’m known online for my plethora of animals and random other content like building a DIY koi pond, cutting up watermelons in the summer, or even turning all the lights off at the end of the night elevator music, my true passion is my writing. Getting up the courage to self-publish my novels is something I am super proud of and will forever work to make successful. These books not only gave me a place to express myself but gave me a chance to offer much-needed representation in the media. My main cast of characters have LGBQ+ representation, one of the main trio is a double below knee amputee, and another has severe anxiety and panic attacks throughout the series. I make a point to touch on the brutal truths of trauma such as panic attacks, PTSD, depression, and more. Being able to give that representation and break the stigmas associated with mental health is important to me. I depict these strong, successful, and loving characters and make sure not to hide the stories happening behind closed doors or make it seem like everything is okay at the end of the story because the big bad guy was defeated. On top of that, I’ve gotten to meet and reach some amazing readers and people through these books. I’ve gotten to push myself further than just putting words on paper. I think my biggest challenge yet was the audiobooks. My narrator, Patrick Wallace, came onto the audiobook project with me with 0 experience in audiobook narration with me and we both learned this new skill together. There was a huge learning curve there and I was happy we were both ready to take it on. During the audiobooks, I have to learn so much more about audio editing than I did before as well as find better ways to do things. Patrick has been amazing to work with the first two books and I must say, after the chaos that was Mercy’s Light, we streamlined things going into the sequel and came back with a much better result.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Funding a self-published book is quite a task. From the artwork to the editing, to the audiobooks, to simply ordering proofs for approval. Those expenses add up and they add up quickly. During the production of the first book, I did everything out of my own pocket. I took fund from my day job to pay for everything that had to do with book 1. I funded the production of the novel as well as the audiobook all by myself using the extra money from my day job. Let’s just say, during production I was budgeting myself more than usual. Did I want to order pizza or did I want to be able to pay for that two hours of audiobook recording? Audiobook it is! When I went into the sequel and the redesign for Mercy’s Light I was in a totally different ballpark. I was pretty much doing writing and content creation full time so my expenses for tight. During the production of the sequel’s audiobook, I had pretty much run through all my budget doing the cover redesign and was scraping together what was needed for the audiobook. Producing the audiobooks was so important to me because as someone with ADHD, I have a hard time focusing on reading sometimes and audiobooks really help me focus. I wanted to make sure others with difficulties reading whether it was vision impairment, learning disorder, or something else, had access to the books. So what I ended up doing was running two separate fundraisers that consisted of 12-hour live streams where we talked about the books, played games, and I interacted with my followers and other creators. The results were amazing and I was able to completely fund the audiobook production and do a few extra amazing things for the series. I felt so grateful and still am for the amazing people that made the audiobook happen.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being a writer is hearing how my work has helped someone. One of my most memorable messages I’ve received from a reader was when she shared with me that her father was sick in the hospital for weeks before passing away and she had started reading the books during this time. She reached out to me to thank me for taking the time to write the Keepers Series novels because she was pretty sure it was the only thing that got her through losing her father. She couldn’t even tell me how many times she read/listened to the books during this hard time in her life. She called it her comfort series and said it now reminds her of her dad in the best ways and that she related to these characters going through loss because she had just gone through it herself. Messages like that really do make all the stress and time worth it for me. Every time someone tells me the books helped them cope with something difficult or they tell me so and so from the book is their new comfort character I am reminded of why I do what I do. It’s honestly crazy to think about how this world I created as a child to help me through such difficult times has become that for other people.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.keeperseries.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stressinabox/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stressinabox
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/stressinabox
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/stressinabox?themeRefresh=1
• Other: TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@stressinabox