Today we’d like to introduce you to Marie Jones
Hi MARIE, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I came out of the womb telling stories. At least that’s what I’m told. From a very early age I was telling tall tales to anyone who would listen and when I learned to write, I began writing them down. My first book was written at age 6 about living on “Marse,” complete with crayon illustrations about living on the red planet. Even then, I needed an editor. But the seed was planted. I loved fiction. I loved using my rather potent imagination to create what was not there before.
I wrote and published throughout my teen years and into my twenties. I wrote movie and book reviews, magazine pieces, and short stories and accumulated quite a resume of published works. If I were to count every piece I had published it would be over 1,000. I also wrote gift books and inspiration books for many years for a gift book company. Later, I started writing my own books. I dabbled first in non-fiction in 2000, shortly before my son was born. After that, I was able to secure an agent whom I still work with today and went on to publish another 26 non-fiction books.
My first love was always fiction and I continued to get short stories published wherever I could. I then wrote a handful of novels, and one of them was published traditionally. The rest I published on my own. Self-publishing is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because the author controls everything. It’s a curse because the author controls everything!
I also wrote and optioned at least ten screenplays over the last twenty years, and ended up selling two of them. They both were produced and aired in 2023: MISTLETOE CONNECTION on UPtv and SECRETS BENEATH THE FLOORBOARDS on Lifetime Movie Network. I continue to write screenplays because i love the format and visual storytelling structure.
I also wrote and produced several short films that made the festival circuit.
Now that I am older, I have come full circle, returning back to my first love of storytelling. I am focusing on writing fiction and screenplays. I never say never, though, and might be called to write another non-fiction book, but for now I am letting my childhood imagination return to the stage front and center.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road has never been smooth. There have been obstacles along the way, some of my own making, others external to me. First off, I had to believe in myself because when you tell someone you want to be a writer, they tend to laugh or roll their eyes. I knew I was born to write and in many ways had to prove that to myself before I could prove it to others.
In my earlier years, before the Internet and computers, I had to write in longhand on a pad with a pen and type up my manuscripts on a typewriter. This is something younger people will never understand. It was hard and time-consuming, yet we knew no other way and we made it work. Oh, and I had to send my manuscripts off by mail with a fully=stamped return envelope. Then I had to wait, sometimes months, before I got the usual rejection slip back, or, on occasion, an acceptance letter.
Writers today have it made.
I also struggled with health issues, addiction, and the usual stuff of life that often derailed my writing for a while, but I always found my way back to it. Writers often have a hard time putting their writing time first and procrastination runs rampant. I never got writer’s block, but I did get life block!
If you were born to write, you cannot NOT write.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am proud I stuck with a childhood dream and never gave up no matter the obstacles and lack of belief in myself from self and others. I am proud that I have a huge body of work out in the world that empowers, educates, enlightens, and entertains. I am proud that I am still writing and have more stories inside that must come out before I move on to the next realm.
I am also proud that I have learned to write in just about every format and genre there is. I’ve sold work about so many different things and my fiction covers everything from romance to science fiction to horror.
However, I often wonder if I’d be way more successful had I, like many other writers, just taken one genre or one type of writing and focused only on that. Sure, it’s possible, but I think it would have driven me insane. As a child, I wanted to be a jockey, a policewoman on horseback, a teacher, an astronaut, and about fifteen other things and writing allowed me to do all of those things. I could make up stories and write fictional characters who worked those fields, or I could research and write non-fiction books about the same. Writing, to me, was, and still is, freedom.
I think what sets me apart is my ability as a non-fiction writer to research subjects deeply, having a journalism background from high school and college. In fiction, it’s my ability to write stories that have both a masculine and feminine touch. If I use my initials, readers assume I’m male. That’s fine with me. I like to buck assumptions.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
I have so many but there is one that stands out as a defining moment for the rest of my life. When I was around 7 or 8, my father, who was a scientist, mentioned to my brother at the supper table that where we lived was once underwater. They were talking about dinosaurs, which was my brother’s fave subject. I listened attentively, then the next day, I got a spoon and began digging a small hole in the backyard under the swingset area. I graduated to a larger spoon, then a garden trowel. My mom says I came in a bit later and asked for a shovel. She knew I liked to explore outside and didn’t give it a second thought.
A few hours passed and my mom says she looked out the upper story bedroom window and was shocked to see me standing in a four-foot deep hole, pulling rocks out of the side. All around me were neighborhood kids. She came out to see what was going on and I proceeded to tell her that I was digging for fossils. However, I was even more clever. When the local kids came around to play, I let each of them take a turn digging while I supervised.
Then I jumped into the hole and pulled out fossils. Of sea shells. I still have them to this day.
I spent the rest of my life digging as a writer for the fossils of truths buried in the imagination. I know, it sounds corny, but that singular event made me who I am.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.mariedjones.com/wordpress/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marie.d.jones/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marie.d.jones/
- Twitter: https://x.com/MarieDJones
Image Credits
Photo of me by Max Jones.
