We were lucky to catch up with Jessica Mathews recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jessica, appreciate you joining us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

Success, for me, is hearing how my work has impacted others. Sure, money is nice, but as a children’s book author, hearing that a child loves a story I wrote is a success. My goal is to get as many books into the hands of as many children as I can and foster their love of reading and creativity.

Jessica, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a published author who writes books for children and adults. I do use a pen name (J.L. Mathews) for my adult brand so children cannot search for me and link to adult books. I keep things as simple as possible since I do have to maintain a day job. I like to tell people I have a day job to fund my lifestyle as a writer. Any other writer can tell you, this is pretty accurate.

I have always loved to write and create stories as far back as I can remember. When I was much younger than I am today, my father would write all of the stories I told him down and we would tell these stories to my younger sisters at bedtime. We did find a lone story that survived my childhood hidden in between some photos in a box. This story, Chicken Noodle Soup, was published in 2021 as a gift to my father for his 60th birthday.

My writing continued to flourish throughout my life, though I did not realize I could make writing a career until 2017 when I published my first picture book, The Old Man and the Pirate Princess, which is a story I wrote for my niece and nephew (and illustrated and published myself at Office Depot) in 2011 when they were born.

Now, I continue to write books for children and adults. I have published over 25 books with more planned for 2024!

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I made a career change in 2015 from professional counseling to finance. Decidedly, finance was my “brain break” from my clients’ stories I carried with me as a counselor. That break ended up turning into a new career that has spanned 12 years. I never went back to counseling as my main source of income. At first, I stressed about the amount of time and money I spent in school getting multiple master’s degrees and the amount of time I spent getting a license. However, when I took my break I realized there were other things I wanted to do with my life. One of the things I had always wanted to do (but never got the chance) was break into writing and publish professional books (sorry, Office Depot).

Once I could breathe again, I joined my local writers’ guild to see what I needed to do to publish. There, I met my friend and illustrator (Jennifer Stolzer- www.jenniferstolzerillustration.com) who took the time to explain the publishing process. Once I decided to independently publish my books, I tapped my resource for her illustration work to publish The Old Man and the Pirate Princess.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

The main issue non-creatives seem to have with my job as an author is that, while I am putting out books as a product, my publishing schedule is not consistent. I am not publishing, say, one book per month. I am publishing based on when I complete a manuscript and when my illustrator can complete the interior. This generally nets 4-6 books per year. I also don’t write adult books as fast as I write children’s books as they are decidedly longer than picture book manuscripts. This means I am lucky to publish 1 adult book a year. This business model would sink other businesses as they need to produce new product every month to survive.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jessicamathewsbooks.com
• Instagram: hey_steve_its_bucky
• Facebook: @jessicamathewsbooks

Image Credits
Jennifer Stolzer did the illustrations and logos. Kelsey Kukal-Keeton did the headshot.