Writing On Your Own
local novelist Jaron Lee Knuth
Matt Ledger, photos by Andrea Paulseth |
Chippewa Falls novelist Jaron Lee Knuth isn’t out to send a message or inspire millions with his writing; he’s just out to tell a good story.
“The big thing with my writing,” Jaron says, “is I want to be entertaining. I look at it as entertainment. I’m not trying to change the world.”
Still, even entertainment can be affecting. “When you get an e-mail from some guy over in Iraq who read your zombie book and just loved it, and it’s getting him through a week in Iraq,” says Jaron, “it’s like, OK, now I’m doing something worthwhile.”
The zombie book Jaron mentions is his debut work, After Life, a story of the relationship between Alex, the bored retail slave, and Morgan, the web cartoonist Alex has been in love with his whole life. Oh yeah … and there are zombies involved.
“If I were to make an analogy to movies, I would say my first novel is more of the summer blockbuster type,” Jaron says, “and then the second one is more of like the indie film.”
Jaron’s second novel, Fixing Sam, revolves around the character of Samuel Grant (who is the son of two celebrities) and the spiral of despair that is his life. The book opens with Samuel’s girlfriend rejecting his marriage proposal and Samuel apathetically driving his car into oncoming traffic. From there, Samuel engages in a trek through everything from seedy bars to therapists’ offices to reality television sets as he searches for something to give his life meaning.
When it came time to actually publish these books, Jaron admits the task seemed a bit daunting. But then he found Amazon’s CreateSpace, a self-publishing site that allows print-on-demand, mitigating the costs that a big print run of a book usually incurs.
“If I could get something across in Volume One to other people, especially college-age kids that are writers, it would be to get into self-publishing,” Jaron says. “It’s such a huge market right now with the Kindle and e-books. People are looking for stuff and you don’t have to worry about selling or pitching your story.”
Indeed, Jaron says that his digital sales are currently about four times higher than his print sales, a fact he attributes to the low price point. “Ninety-nine cents is the lowest price Amazon will let me sell it at,” Jaron says, “but I just want as many people to give it a shot as possible. It’s not really a risk then. It’s only a buck.”
Jaron is currently working on his third novel, a work that is taking a bit more time than his first two. “It’s still too early to talk about it,” he says. “It’s a little bit more of a struggle. I think that maybe there’s more pressure now. When I wrote the first one I wasn’t necessarily even that serious about it. But now I’ve got people that are reading my stuff, and I feel a little more pressure to do it right.”
But even with the increased pressure, Jaron says the best way to write is to just keep powering through. “I know that I’m getting better as a writer because I’m continuing to write,” he says. “Don’t be discouraged if your writing isn’t that great at first, because it’s going to get better.”
If you want to check out Jaron’s books, head over to his page at Amazon.com.
