🎤Interview with J.A. Cox Author Mastering Your Scenes #AuthorInterview

 

J.A. Cox is a husband, father and disabled veteran. He is passionate about Jesus Christ and has a desire to allow God to use his writing to bring glory to his name and reach others for him. His other passions lie in: 1) Empowering people by teaching about things that he is knowledgeable in in a simple and fun as well as interesting manner. 2)Inspiring others that they may realize how the true potential to overcome their perceived dilemma lies right between their ears and how they allow it to manipulate what their eyes behold. 3) Helping people to realize that being healthy truly begins with realizing how important it is for them to be intimately acquainted with their own body in order for others to help them resolve its maladies that beset it. Along with those, he enjoys entertaining with fiction based on the concept that fact is stranger than fiction and then stretching it just a tad to create some memorable page turning moments that you will likely recall for some time to come.

Author Links  

Website | LinkedIn

Can you tell us what your book is about? 

Mastering your Scenes is about helping writers accomplish just that, the ability to master scene writing.  I honestly feel that the concept of what a scene is and what goes into, regardless of genre is not something understood very well amongst writers.  I am persuaded that this is also the greatest reason why writers block is such a problem amongst writers as well.

Why did you write your book?

It may sound like a joke but I wrote this book so that I could finish my science fiction work in progress. I suppose the punch line is that I ended up self-publishing it before I completed my work in progress due to the excitement of how much it helped me.  I use a lot of scene examples from Fulfilling a Vow in Mastering Your Scenes and in a way it is a teaser for its future publication.

Who influenced you to write your book?

My own struggles to make progress in my work in progress, Fulfilling a Vow, is what influenced me to write Mastering Your Scenes.  I concluded that understanding what went into every scene and being able to reproduce it repeatedly is what was keeping me from being able to realize my full potential.

Which author(s) do you admire?

You can say my unrequited mentors for scene writing were Rayne Hall, R.A. Salvatore and J.B Olson and Randy Ingermanson and K. M. Weiland.  They gave me much inspiration about crafting scenes.  Rayne Hall is an excellent teacher of how to embellish various scenes and has inspired me much through some of her writing craft books. R. A. Salvatore for anyone familiar with him knows that he is the master of intricate, fight scenes that literally slam you  into the midst of the action and leave you with your head spinning.  I have gleaned much from J.B. Olson and Randy Ingermanson on their teachings of the snowflake method and adapted it into my own writing style.  K.M. Weiland’s vast knowledge of writing lore has proven to be helpful as I was getting comfortable in my own writing voice.  I would highly recommend all of them to any budding and seasoned writer.

What kind of advice would you give other nonfiction authors?

The advice that I would give other nonfiction authors is never, ever give up. It really does take seeing things from a different perspective such as looking at things from upside down so that you can see the answer that has been right in your face all along.