Interview With Jeanne Cook

The author Gini Koch and Anita Ensal are pen names of Jeanne Cook which she uses to write Science Fiction and Fantasy stories.

One might be familiar with Anita Ensal‘s work in The Book of Exodi with her short story “The Last Day on Earth.” She also has a few more anthology appearances on the horizon being published by DAW Books.

Gini Koch writes mostly about aliens. Her new book, “Touched By An Alien” is a story about finding out that the rumors of Roswell were real, and that the aliens were sent to protect Earth.

I recently asked Jeanne Cook a few questions about both pen names in an attempt to figure out what exactly makes two authors tick.

Eposic: How does writing under pen names benefit your writing?

Jeanne Cook: My pen names each have a very different writing “voice”. For example, Gini Koch is more funky, funny, and light, very approachable, focused on pop culture and having fun, she’s a lighter read. Anita Ensal is deeper, darker, more focused on the bigger issues and the bigger picture, the humor is more dry, she’s more of a serious, meaningful read with a message. While I think readers can and will enjoy what they read from both, their voices are so different that if you read Gini Koch’s “Touched by an Alien” and then went to “The Last Day on Earth” and thought it was from Gini, you’d be disappointed, and vice versa, because they don’t sound or write alike. That’s the main reason I use pen names — the voices and, in many cases, the genres, are different enough that it would be misleading the reader to use the same name in all cases.

Also, pen names allow me to write in other and all genres that interest me. Without them, I’d be buttonholed into a certain genre and voice, meaning my creativity would be stifled. With pen names, I can literally do whatever I want and it’s okay, because the only expectations are on the pen names’ genre and voice, not mine.

E: Out of all your pen names, which would you say is your favorite? Why?

JC: Oh, that’s a hard one. I have to say “whoever I’m writing as right now”. The why for that is because at the time of writing, I love what I’m doing and therefore the voice of who’s writing it. When I reread my novels or shorts, I don’t ever find myself wishing “someone else” had written it.

If you put a gun to my daughter’s head and said I had to choose one and only one, I’d go with Gini Koch, because I landed my (absolutely fabulous) agent because of “Touched by an Alien”. My husband says I should like my own name, Jeanne Cook, since that’s what I’m published in humor under and sold first, and it “sounds like me”. But I could make a case for each pen name and why it’s my favorite, so I’ll stop here.

E: I really enjoyed “The Last Day on Earth” in Book of Exodi that you wrote as Anita Ensal. What was your inspiration for writing that one?

JC: Thank you — it’s always great to hear that people enjoy what you’ve created!

I was actually doing something other than writing or brainstorming (probably laundry, LOL) when this story idea came to me — what do you do when there’s nothing you can do? At first I looked at it from a character archetype viewpoint — what do heroes do when faced with the inevitable? But that’s what most great epic stories are about — the heroes overcome impossible odds to save the day. But what if they can’t do that?

I turned the idea around a bit and asked what a couple who’d been through life together — whether that life was the life of heroes or ordinary people — and who truly loved each other and were happy to their cores together do when faced with the completely inevitable? How would you face the actual apocalypse if there was no hope for escaping it?

For me, the key plot point of the story is the inevitability. There is no hope for those not on the shuttles. For this couple, the only hope lies with their daughter, who they’ll never see again, and probably haven’t seen for days if not weeks. It’s an unusual scenario for me, because in the majority of what I write, no matter how bleak or dark, there’s always a ray of light. It might be a little ray, but it’s there. I wanted to find that ray of light in this situation, even when the hope for a tomorrow of any kind is long gone.

E: In general, where do you get inspiration?

JC: For the most part, I get half of my inspiration from music and half from my dreams.

I listen to all kinds of music — I like something in every musical genre and sub-genre (seriously…and I have a packed 80 gig iPod to prove it) — but 99.9% of it has lyrics, I’m not an instrumentals only kind of girl in most situations. It’s always interesting to me which bands inspire which stories, too, because it’s rarely the ones you’d think. I think my most extreme example is a historical set in the 1830′s and 1840′s I’m working on while listening to Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits. I don’t argue about which bands will work for which stories, but some are so integrated with a particular series that I can’t listen to them without at least brainstorming about that series in my mind.

As for my dreams, I’ve always had very vivid, detailed dreams, I dream in color, and I have pretty good recall. So I get great character and story ideas by going to sleep — I’d say that 95% of my science fiction and fantasy story ideas come from my dreams. The stories end up very different from the dreams most of the time, but still, I can tell you what I dreamed that caused “this” or “that” story to take form.

The small percentage of inspiration that doesn’t come from music or dreaming is usually triggered by a stray line of conversation; something I see that seems off, different, or amazing to me; or from someone saying, “why don’t you write about this” and my agreeing that it sounds like something I’d enjoy doing. Happily, as my career is progressing, that last one’s happening more and more.

E: “The Last Day on Earth” dealt with a couple who came to terms with impending apocalypse. I know this is fictional, but do you suppose you would react the way your characters did in the story?

JC: I’d like to think so. There’s a lot of me and my husband in that story, but there’s also a lot of my mother- and father-in-law and other friends and relations who’ve been happily married for a long time. I wanted the story to feel like it could be any couple going through this, which is one of the reasons I didn’t give the characters names.

E: Based on the cover alone, “Touched By An Alien” seems like sci-fi meets James Bond, would this be an accurate description?

JC: Oooh, I love that description! And it is somewhat accurate. My editor at DAW describes Touched by an Alien as “Men in Black” crossed with “True Lies”. It’s definitely a fast-paced, fun, and action-oriented take on the idea of aliens among us, with a lot of humor and romance mixed in. It was fun to write — I love the characters and the universe. I’m hoping I get to visit them a lot in the future!

As an author, you always worry that your cover won’t represent your book properly, but that’s not the case here. Daniel Dos Santos did the cover art, and he nailed the essence of the book in that picture, which is, I’m sure, why he’s one of the top artists in SF/F working today. (Since he did my cover, of course I consider him the best out there, but I freely admit to bias.)

So far, I’ve been lucky art-wise, since I thought the illustration by Michelle Rose Pedro for The Last Day on Earth in The Book of Exodi was also spot on. I’m hoping that streak continues.

E: For TBAA, what made you choose to be Gini Koch?

JC: Touched by an Alien started out as a dark short story, based on a dream I’d had the night before. I wasn’t sure “who” was writing it, but by page 3 a new voice I’d never used before took over, and then the characters took over, and then the book took over. It was the most organic thing I’d ever written to that date, and it was exhilarating. So, I didn’t choose to be Gini Koch, she asserted herself.

E: What lead up to writing and publishing TBAA?

JC: Years and years of writing, submitting, getting rejected, submitting again, getting some acceptances, and continuing on. But in terms of the actual lead up, I’d been feeling that the last things I needed to conquer as an author was word count and pacing. I didn’t have a good handle on when a story should end, or control over it — I was at the “it’ll end when it ends” mindset, which is great when you’re starting out, but not so good when you want to write for publication, because word count truly matters. So I challenged myself to write a number of short stories of varying lengths — in publishable increments from 100 to under 10,000 words.

I wrote at least a dozen stories, each of them different lengths. By the time I finished those, pacing clicked for me, and I now can look at anything I’m writing, check the word count, and know what has to happen when in order for the novel or short to end at the right word count for the genre or publication and still be a proper story. I also got a lot of product from it — The Last Day on Earth was the 1,500 word challenge piece. That dark short story that became Touched by an Alien was supposed to be a 2,500 short I was planning to submit to an anthology. I’m okay with how that turned out.

E: TBAA comes out soon, where can people buy it?

JC:It’s releasing from DAW Books on April 6, 2010 and should be in all major bookstores. But it’s available for pre-order right now at Borders.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Amazon.com. These days, pre-orders are a vital part of the process, so please encourage your readers to go pre-order the book right now! ;-D

JC: I’m also planning what I’m calling the Self-Propelled Book Tour. I’m hoping to hit several major metro areas around the U.S., so if folks would like me to come and do a book signing and/or reading, they should send me an email (giniATginikochDOTcom) with details and we can see if it’s feasible.