**To enter to win an autographed copy of the first three books in the Jaz Parks series (Once Bitten, Twice Shy; Another One Bites the Dust; Biting the Bullet), please send an email with your name and mailing address to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with JAZ PARKS in the subject. The contest ends on May 30, 2008, after which the winner will be chosen randomly and notified via email. Only one entry per mailing address.

By Christina Radish

Photo by Cindy Pringle

Rardin recently spoke with MediaBlvd Magazine about her path to a career as a writer, and what readers can expect from Jaz Parks, in the future.

MediaBlvd Magazine> How long have you been a writer, and have you actually had any formal training?

Jennifer Rardin> I have a Bachelor’s degree in English, so I guess you could call that formal training. Some people don’t figure out what they want to do, until later in life, but I knew I wanted to do that when I was young, so that’s why I went into English. I thought that would help me become a better writer. And, I’ve done all kinds of writing. Right before my agent sold Once Bitten, Twice Shy, I was a grant writer. Before that, I was freelancing, doing magazine work, mainly for trade magazines. I’ve written advertising. I’ve done TV scripts. I’ve done business video scripts. Any kind of writing you can think of, I’ve probably done it because my attitude always was, “Anything I can do, writing wise, has got to make me a better writer. And, anything I do, as a writer, that somebody will pay me for, is going to make me a happy writer.” It’s like somebody saying, “I’m going to pay for this, so you’re good enough.”

MediaBlvd> When did you decide to make an actual career out of writing?

Jennifer> I decided in high school. Since I have high school kids myself, I’m watching them try to make that decision. I went through the thing they’re going through, where you look at your future and wonder, “How happy will I be doing anything else?” And, I just knew I’d be miserable doing anything else. So, there was that moment in college, when I was talking to my advisor, who was a wonderful man, that taught all of my creative writing classes, and I said, “I want to write novels,” and he said, “Maybe you should get a teaching degree, too.” It’s hard to make a living at this, and he was trying to be practical. I said, “No, I’ll be fine.” I just refused to take any other approach than, “Eventually, I’m going to make money at this.” Having said that, I’ve had all kinds of other jobs, where I was writing at the same time. I worked for a TV station. I’ve been a child care provider. I’ve worked from my home, freelancing. But, my husband was really the breadwinner. So, I haven’t made a living at writing until just now, when my agent sold these Jaz Parks books. My advisor was right, in a way, because it’s not really practical to decide that. But, I think I was right, too, because if you don’t have that kind of focus and desire, to get to this point, it’s never, ever going to happen. And, that’s the reason why, even when I was grant writing, at night, I would come home and be writing this book, by hand, in a tablet. I didn’t have a laptop. I couldn’t afford a laptop, so I wrote the first book by hand, in a 10 cent spiral notebook, before I went to sleep at night, or when I would be in the car, waiting for the kids at one of their events. That’s how that happened. You have to have that kind of desire for it to even pan out.

MediaBlvd> How many had you written before selling the first Jaz Parks book, or was that the first one you had actually written?

Jennifer> No, that was not the first one I had written. I had written three. I started writing novels when I was 25 and, at that time, I was staying home with my kids, so I was writing during that time. I wrote three novels, and then I stopped with the novels and was really concentrating on bringing money in for my writing. I just needed to feel like I wasn’t spitting in the wind, and that I was good enough to make money at this, so I was doing magazine work and short work. So, I wrote three novels, and then I was thinking about the next one. I was talking to my husband and I said, “I have a confession to make,” and he looked at me like, “Oh, my God, what have you done?” I said, “I really like vampires.” We live in a conservative area of the world, in the Midwest, and that is a huge confession to make, in the wrong company. My husband is just hugely open-minded, and he didn’t even laugh. He was like, “Fine, why don’t you write about that?” I was like, “Are you kidding me? It’s all been written. There’s just nothing more to say.” And, he said, “Well, not by you.” The other part of his point was that I should just write something I like. I was so flipped out about selling the stuff, I had forgotten that part of the reason I started this was because I loved it. You don’t do this without a passion that leads you to make the weird decision to do it in the first place. So, Once Bitten, Twice Shy was my fourth book. After I finished it, which took me about two years, I started to market it to agents. And, during that process, I wrote another one. The fifth book I wrote is still sitting there, waiting, because Once Bitten, Twice Shy got sold, and my editor bought three books, and then they asked for two more books.

MediaBlvd> What genre were the first books you had written?

Jennifer> I would call them pure fantasy. The Jaz Parks books are urban fantasy, where you can mix our world with the mythology of vampires and witches, and so on, and have that all be a real part of the urban fantasy world. The first three were more pure fantasy, where you create the entire world.

MediaBlvd> For those who are not yet familiar with your work, can you talk about the Jaz Parks series? Did something specific spark that idea, or provide the inspiration for the character?

Jennifer> I really started out to write a book about vampires, in a way that nobody had talked about them yet, which was quite a challenge, considering they’ve been doing it for hundreds of years. My main concept was, “What if you put a vampire in a situation where he’s doing what he does best, which is killing, but he’s doing it for the good guys?” So, my main vampire character is an assassin for the CIA, and he’s one of the only good vampires. I hate to put people in categories because he’s not all good, but he’s trying. He’s one of the vampires who is trying to blend with humans. So, I started to write about him, and his partner Jaz, who in the beginning is his assistant. She’s also an assassin, and she’s been assigned to hang out with him. She’s like, “What the hell? He doesn’t really need my help.” Before this, she was on her own. She was doing her own deal for the CIA. So, she’s not quite sure why she’s even been hooked up with this guy. I started writing about these two characters, in the third person and, about 50 pages in, I began to think in the first person, as Jaz. Her voice just kept demanding to be heard. It was almost like I was seeing the story from her perspective, and I realized that I just had to tell it from her perspective. So, even though I had approached it, being interested in the vampire perspective, Jaz was the voice that came out. She became the main character, and what the story is about. She’s got some pretty horrible stuff going on, in her past, that she has to deal with. And, it’s about how she deals with that. She’s trying to do her job while, at the same time, she’s trying to deal with family issues. In a way, I wanted that to reflect what we all have to deal with. We all have to go to work and, at the same time, we all have to deal with family issues. We’ve all got stuff in our private lives that is bleeding over into our jobs and making it all mush, that we’re always trying to make sense out of. We’re always trying to put this normal face on, to show the world. But, right behind that, things aren’t necessarily so normal. So, that’s where the whole thing came from.

MediaBlvd> Was there a specific inspiration for any of the supporting characters, or did they just come out of writing the story?

Jennifer> There are people I know that are probably mixed up in all the characters. I wouldn’t say any one person inspired any one character, necessarily. But, Cole’s sense of humor is very similar to my son’s sense of humor. Some of the ways that Jaz and Vayl relate, when they’re relating well, as a couple, are very similar to the way my husband and I relate, as a couple. And, I have to say that Jaz and Vayl don’t relate well, very often. Some of it comes from my life and my observations. It’s got to. But, once you’ve created a character, then it’s all born as them, if you’re doing it well, and I don’t always. That’s why rewriting is such a long process. My editor helped me with this so much, especially with the first book. She’d say, “Would they do this? Vayl wouldn’t say this. This is so out of character.” I did that a lot in the first book. I would jump character. I’d have Vayl say something that really Cole probably would have said. So, you have to go back and think, “What would he say?,” or “How would she react?” I know what kind of person Jaz is, basically, at her core. Once you’ve built that character, then they’re not anybody you know, anymore.

MediaBlvd> How did you know that you had an idea that was good enough to be an ongoing series?

Jennifer> That was a conscious decision, when I was first mapping out that book, in my head. I knew it would be a good idea to do a series because that means you get to write more books. And so, it had to be something readers would want to come back to. Having been trained as an English major, I understood conflict had to be at the core of it. What kind of conflict? Well, you can’t get any better than life and death. That’s the ultimate conflict. So, that’s where the idea of assassination came in. For me, as a reader, if there’s an element of romance in a book, I’m happy. I don’t want it to be the main thing, hardly ever, in a book, but I like it if you get at least one pair together. Then I’m happy, as a reader. So, I knew that I wanted the main characters to be a guy and a girl, who might or might not get together, because at least there was that romantic tension. I had the conflict and I had the two characters that I thought were incredibly interesting, and I thought that I had a set-up, with two CIA assassins. That leaves them open for all kinds of assignments. You can take them all over the world, which I have. For the book I’m working on right now, they’re in Scotland. The book that came out in February, Biting the Bullet (Book 3), takes place in Tehran (Iran). That’s a neat deal. Instead of my readers being stuck in one place, they can follow these characters all over the world, into exotic and funky settings and locations, and see how they work and how they operate, in different ways. I think that’s a real positive for the series.

MediaBlvd> When you spread a story out over multiple books, how do you decide what to resolve and what to leave hanging, in each book?

Jennifer> That’s not always easy. In fact, with the fourth book, Bitten to Death (August 2008), I finished the draft and sent it to my editor, and she said, “I think you tied too much up. This feels like the last book.” And, we had agreed on five books. So, it’s not always easy. I have a main uber villain. Over the course of these five books, they are working their way closer to catching this huge bad guy while, at the same time, in each book, they’re dealing with an underling bad guy. Although things get resolved in each book, with the villain that I introduce in each book, there’s still this progression towards the main uber villain that, hopefully, finally gets tied up in the fifth book. You should feel done with that villain in the fifth book, but I’m not sure I’m done with Jaz. Even though we’ve agreed on five books, we’ll see if readers want any more. There’s no reason why we can’t introduce another uber villain. That’s the way of the world. People watch the news every day, and there’s a new bad guy that pops up in the news, all the time. As long as people will go, “I can buy that,” you can introduce another uber villain and go along that road again, if you want to go along that road. Although, I don’t want to get roped in. I don’t want to put people in a rut, where they go, “Oh, here we go again!” That would be a bad thing, too. You never know. We may change stuff up a little bit.

MediaBlvd> Have you given any thought to writing a story from any of the other character’s points-of-view, even if it’s just for an anthology?

Jennifer> Actually, I have. We were talking about that the other day. I’m so visually oriented, I’m like, “We’ll do a spin off!” I think it would be fun to write a series of books, where I write one book about each of the different minor characters that I’ve introduced, who I really love. I love Cole. I just think he’s hilarious. And, with Jaz’s Granny May, I’ve dropped some hints, through the series, that she has had a very interesting past. She’s passed on. All she does is appear in Jaz’s mind, to talk to her now, but as the series goes on, you understand that Granny May had done some really interesting things in her life. So, I wouldn’t mind doing a book about her. And, I don’t feel done talking about Cassandra either. She’s a thousand years old, and she’s done some stuff in her life that probably bears talking about. So, I wouldn’t mind doing a series of books on those guys.

MediaBlvd> Is there a character in the series that you find particularly difficult to write for?

Jennifer> Vayl is the hardest. I still find him very tough to capture. I don’t know exactly what it is about him, but I always have to go back and really think about him, harder than I feel like I should, by now. I don’t know what makes him such a mysterious character to me. I think that’s part of his power, as a character. To a reader, I think that comes across well. He’s a tough one. The fourth book, that I just finished, is all about his past and the time he spent in this Vampere household, living among vampires. Then, I was writing about a bunch of vampies, and he was still the hardest one. Maybe it’s just because they’re all vampires, and that’s very tough for me. I love them, but I don’t get them, and maybe that’s why there’s this attraction. I don’t understand them, so I’m always trying to understand them. But, Vayl was still the toughest one.          

MediaBlvd> How do you feel about writing sex scenes?

Jennifer> I just don’t feel like it’s my job to get anybody off. And, my kids are going to read this, so ew. Even though these books are written for adults, kids are reading them, too. There’s a lot of sexual tension there, but I’m never going graphic. I can take you to the door, but if you want to go through, that’s your deal. I think it actually steals from the reader. The reader provides so much, anyway, so the less you can say, the better. That can be a problem, sometimes. When I was writing about one of the monsters, in the first book, I was just trying to give the outline. You can freak yourself out pretty well, if I barely tell you what’s there. But, my editor said, “You know, I just don’t quite have enough. I’m kind of there, but I’m not freaked out enough.” So, it’s a line you walk, where you wonder, “Have I given them enough? Have I gone too far?” I don’t know if that comes with experience, but maybe it’s something you learn. You do have to let the reader bring their own stuff to the story, for sure.

MediaBlvd> Do you have any specific writing habits, like a particular location or time of day that you prefer to write in? And, do you write every day?

Jennifer> I wouldn’t say that I’m horribly disciplined. I don’t hold myself to a time clock. But, I do treat this like I would, going to any job. I get up, I shower and I dress in nice clothes, as if I could walk out the door and walk into an office. I think that’s important. It’s your frame of mind, so I’m in the frame of mind for work. In the winter, I write at my dining room table. And, in the summer, I write on my back porch. I’ll write in the morning, then I’ll have some lunch, and then I write in the afternoon. Then, I’ll do chores and cook dinner and, depending on deadline, which has been very tight, then I’ll write in the evening. And, I usually write on weekends, too. It’s rare that I don’t. I read Stephen King’s book On Writing, and I really took it to heart, when he said, “Write every day. Write on your birthday. Write on Christmas. If that’s your thing, do it.” So, I almost never miss a day, even if all I’ve done is a paragraph at bedtime. I have a life and, sometimes, it’s a busy life, so sometimes all I get is a paragraph at bedtime, on a Sunday night. But, I do try to write, every day.

MediaBlvd> Are you the type of writer that likes to plot things out, or do you prefer to see where the story and the characters take you?

Jennifer> The first book I wrote, I did not plot. I just had this general idea. But, I think that’s why it took me so long. I would have long pauses, for days, where I’d go, “I don’t know what happens next.” It would be days, while I’d be deciding what happened next. What I’ve found is that, once you’ve sold a book, you really can’t do that anymore because there are catalogs that have to be printed, and stuff that the publishers have to do, where they need to know what your book is about. And so, then you do have to plot. I’m wavering between how specific I get now. For Books 2-4, I got pretty specific, outlining. And then, I’d get 2/3 of the way through the book, and totally change course, and have to re-outline the whole book. Understanding that, with this last one, I’m doing more of a loose outline, where I’m not requiring more information in my plan, like I had before. I’m trying to fall somewhere in between, “I don’t know what happens,” and outlining in horrible detail. You’ve got to leave room for the creative process and understand that the story is just going to change. The idea is to stay within the parameters that you’ve set, and this big circle that you’ve drawn. If you can stay within that big circle, and make your ends meet that you have already pre-agreed that you have to have, even when the story changes, you’ll be okay. And, so far, that’s worked out pretty well.

MediaBlvd> Do you enjoy getting feedback or suggestions from fans?

Jennifer> I love hearing from fans. And, I’ve had more and more fans visit the website. Actually, the majority of them are not from America, which has surprised me a little bit, but that’s cool. I don’t mind. People are nice. So far, I’ve been lucky. Nobody’s visited my site and told me how much they hate the book. They’ve all been very kind. They kind of gush. We’ve had discussions about who Vayl would be, if we did a movie, and who Jaz would be. And, we don’t even talk about books, always. We might have other random conversations. I enjoy that. I really love talking to fans. I don’t go online and read reviews, at all. My publicist will occasionally send me reviews, and I’ll read those because I feel like I’m supposed to, but I don’t otherwise. Even the good ones -- and they tell me most of them have been good -- don’t feel good to read. And then, it messes with my head, and I’m not writing anymore. I’m thinking, “Well, maybe I should write this way, or maybe I should write that way,” and you can’t do that, as a writer. You just can’t let anybody’s opinion force you to make one decision or another because then you’re not being true to the characters or the story, anymore. I stay away from reviews.

MediaBlvd> Do you ever hear from fans about specific characters that they say they really love, or they really hate?

Jennifer> I’ve never heard from a fan that they hated any particular characters. I did hear from one that the monster at the end of Once Bitten, Twice Shy really freaked her out. And, I was like, “Yes!,” because you never know how scary you’re writing. That was cool. That was really neat. I liked hearing that. One woman wrote me and said she just loved Cole. She liked Vayl, but Cole beat him out. And, this blows me away, but I’ve had three different fans drop the book, walk to the computer, email me and ask, “Do Jaz and Vayl get together? I’ve got to know, right now!” And, I’ll say, “Well, wouldn’t that ruin the story for you?” And, they’ll say, “No, I have to know! This is killing me!” That’s cute. You want that tension, but you don’t want to torture them either. I really didn’t think I was torturing them. Getting that kind of intense reaction has been a surprise to me, but a nice one.

MediaBlvd> Because you set these books all over the place, in different locations, do you actually go to any of those locations, or do you research them online? How do you work it out to make sure that you get the details correct?

Jennifer> I’d like to go, but it just hasn’t been possible, so I do major research. I go online. I get travel books. For the book I’m doing in Scotland, I know a guy who lives in Scotland, so I’ve been emailing him to ask, “Okay, would you say this?,” or “What would you call this item?” I’m not going to catch everything, but if a Scottish person would call an oven, a stove, or if there’s a whole different word they’d use, I want to try to get it right. These books get released all over the world, and I don’t want people going, “They would never say that!” The last thing you want to do, as a writer, is jerk your reader out of the story. That’s one of the big, major cardinal sins. And, a way to do it is to be wrong, or to describe something differently than it actually is. I’ve done that in a couple of places, with some of the military stuff that takes place in Biting the Bullet, just because it didn’t work any other way. And, when I did that, I actually asked a former Marine to read the book for me. I said, “I’m just really worried about this because I don’t want guys and girls, who are in the military, or who are Veterans, to read this and go, ‘This is just insulting! This would never happen!’” because then they’re not in the story anymore. They’re just mad. He said, “You know, what you have is good, and what wasn’t realistic was forgiven because it’s fantasy.” If you don’t quite get it, I think the reader forgives you because they understand that you’re in a not quite real world. But, the whole point is to get as many details correct as you can, so that people can really immerse themselves in the fantasy.

MediaBlvd> When you decided that you wanted to be a writer, did you ever think that you’d have the success that you’ve already had?

Jennifer> No, I really didn’t. Maybe that’s why it took so long. A big reason that I’m even doing this well is because I’m surrounded by people who believe in me, especially my husband. He’s somebody who just always thought I would do this well, and he would never let me stop. There were a couple times, in my life, where I was like, “I just can’t write anymore. I suck, and I’m never going to do what I wanted to do, and this is just torture, even trying. Why am I bothering?” And, he just kept saying, “Well, then you’re doing this for the wrong reason. You can’t stop. This is part of you.” He would just keep encouraging me. He actually believed, more than I did, that I could do this. If you really want to do something like this, and achieve an incredible dream, whatever it is, it’s really great to surround yourself with people who believe in you. Everybody comes to those moments where there is doubt. You wonder, “Am I good enough? Am I ever going to make it? This is such a long, hard road. Should I just sit down?” If you have this wonderful support system that you’ve built for yourself, they can say, “Get off your ass and start working ‘cause you’re not going anywhere until you’re working.” That’s how it’s been for me.

MediaBlvd> What is your proudest accomplishment, thus far?

Jennifer> Being a mom. Even having written four books, and working on my fifth, motherhood has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, or attempted to do, in my life. I just have these two brilliant and amazing kids. Really, that’s what I’m proudest of.

MediaBlvd> Do you know what’s next for you? Do you know what you want to do, beyond telling Jaz’s story?

Jennifer> Yes, and I think I’m going to have to live forever. I’ve got about 25 years worth of work planned. I would like to take a little break from Jaz, just because I’ve been writing so much, and I have some ideas that I’d like to explore. You don’t have to write the whole book anymore, to sell a series. You write the first three chapters of the new series you want to do, and a synopsis, and an overview of each book. And so, I have a new series that I’ve been working on developing, for about the last six months. I sent it to my agent and she read it and gave me some ideas, so it’s back with me and I’m working on the overview. She told me that I’m really better at novels than I am at overviews, which was her nice way of saying that they really suck. So, I think she’s going to be talking to my editor about this pitch pretty soon. And then, we’ll see. I don’t know what my editor is thinking, as far as more Jaz books, or what she’ll think about this new pitch. And, I still have another book that I wrote, that’s just sitting there. I wrote it long-hand. Part of it is in a spiral notebook, and part of it’s in the computer. I was right at the climax of the book when I stopped writing it, so it’s not even quite done. It’s got three chapters left, and it’s calling to me. I need to finish that. And, I’d like a vacation, somewhere in there. That might be nice.

MediaBlvd> Can you give any hints as to what that new pitch is about? Is it in the same genre?

Jennifer> It is an urban fantasy. I don’t think I can say any more than that. I wish I could because I’m so excited about it, but I think I have to wait until it’s all settled and finalized. I think it’s going to be in third person because there is a female character and a male character, and I just really need to get into the male character’s head, this time. He’s so interesting, and he’s got a lot of stuff going on that I think the readers are going to be fascinated with, and yet I really think they’re going to love this female character. She’s nothing at all like Jaz, and I was so concerned about that. Jaz is such a strong character that I thought, “If I’m not careful, she’s going to jump over into my other books.” Well, this gal is nothing like Jaz, but she’s quite a unique woman, in her own way, so you don’t want to get out of her head either. It’s going to be a third person narrative, so you can be in everybody’s head and see what’s going on.

MediaBlvd> Do you want to continue writing in this genre, or are you looking to explore other genres as well?

Jennifer> I just don’t have any desire to explore other genres, at the moment. For me, this urban fantasy genre is an ideal way to reach a reader. I just love the fantasy element. I’m so into that. I always have been, all my life. And yet, when you’re writing, and you need to pull a reader in and make them relate to a scene and stand beside you in a scene, and there’s no easier way to do that than to put it in their world. If I can talk about a Corvette, or eating at a pizza place, you’re there. You know what I’m talking about. Suddenly, not only are you in the scene, but you feel like you could almost turn around and see a vampire. I think it’s beautiful, the way that urban fantasy can bring a reader in and really blend those two elements. For me, it’s really the perfect genre. Having said that, I wouldn’t mind writing a straight mystery. I think those are fun. The book that I want to finish, I don’t know if you would call it an urban fantasy. It’s for Young Adults. It’s got some fantasy elements to it, but I don’t know where publishers would put it. C.S. Lewis was writing the same kind of thing, years before urban fantasy appeared. I’m not sure it’s such a new genre, like they’re saying it is. But, I think it’s wonderful, and it’s where I want to be, for the foreseeable future, anyway.

MediaBlvd> What kind of advice can you offer to aspiring writers who are looking, not just to get published, but who also want to have a long-lasting career?

Jennifer> I was talking to my sister about editors because she’s a writer too, and she asked, “What do you do when your book gets sold and your baby is out the door? How do you deal with it, when your baby is in the editor’s arms?” And, I said, “Well, it’s not your baby anymore. That’s the first thing.” You need to understand that this is a business, and your book is a product. If you want to hang around for 20 or 30 years, people in publishing are not idiots. If your editor is suggesting a change, the reason they’ve suggested that is because something in the manuscript stopped them, in the first place, like it would with any other reader. So, I think a good piece of advice is, “Don’t be a diva.” But, at the same time, I’m not saying to fold and just be some carpet and let someone run right over you. I haven’t made every single change that my editor ever asked me to make, but she has always given me really excellent advice. If you’re not open to changing your baby, and understanding that it’s not your baby anymore, it’s not going to get better and it’s not going to become more readable, and you’re a lot less likely to sell another. Also, if you just try to be a professional about this, and you make your deadlines, and you make sure that your manuscript is clean, and you get rid of all your spelling errors and have someone read it for grammatical mistakes, then you’ll be better off. After you’re done with all the art and all the creation, then kick into professional gear and really approach it as a business. I think that lends itself to longevity.