Interview with author JR Wirth

Tonight our guest is JR Wirth. He is an author from Southern California, currently living in San Bernardino. We have conducted with him an interview about his books.

Do you consider it your strengths to combine ordinary people with extraordinary circumstances, to create characters that will jump off the page?

I do consider it a strength, but it’s the reading audience that will ultimately make the final judgement. As I write them, I spend a lot of time inside the heads of the characters—some more than others. I see them in the scene, or in a moment, and I see those around the character, and then it takes on a life of its own.

What is "Destiny's Lot: A Halloween Love Story" about?

“Destiny's Lot: A Halloween Love Story” is a fun Halloween adventure/suspense story. It takes place in the late 1970’s when life was much slower and people kinder. The non-traditional hero of the story wakes Halloween morning (Saturday) with high hopes for the day’s adventure. He’ll make a few bucks mowing lawns take his siblings on an annual trick-or-treat walk and then party with his love interest Destiny. But things get scary-freaky real quick, and the day and night are anything but normal. It is filled with ghouls, monsters, and plenty of Halloween treats. I don’t think I intended it to be a horror story, but one reviewer made it perfectly clear that it was a horror story for the ages.

How long did you take to write your entire book series 'Twisted Family Holidays Collection'?

'Twisted Family Holidays Collection' was developed over the span of a year. I wrote ‘The Town Beneath the Christmas Tree’ for a special girl in my life, and then found that Books To Go Now publishing had a call for Christmas submissions. They liked it, published it, and soon after asked me to do an anthology. I decided to keep the twisted holiday theme. Then, as certain holidays approached, I wrote another story, until book five, which is actually the sequel to the first and named ‘The Town Around the Christmas Tree’. It was going to be a Thanksgiving story but morphed into a Christmas story. It turned out to be the highest rated of the five. Three of the five books got five-star reviews from Readers Favorite, one received four stars, and one got three stars because the reviewer thought it should have been a full novel, rather than a short story. An updated version of the 'Twisted Family Holidays Collection'—with more thrills—is about to be released in paperback.

Which kind of conflict(s) in your story do you like to write about? Why?

I would have to say that all my stories have an element of good vs. evil, mixed in with the struggles and traumas of daily life. I also think we all deal with right and wrong (even the most twisted minds find rational for their actions) and need a little encouragement from time-to-time to stay on the right track. Even though many of my writings are a bit dark, I hope they provide that impetus.

What is in your background that you think helps you to write these amazing stories?

I would say that everything in my past, present, and, hopefully, future have impacted my ability to empathize and build living, breathing, fallible heroes and heroines that everyone can like and related to. Years of dealing with mentally ill and substance addicted folks has helped as well.