Featured Artist Friday: Jennifer Kibble

Happy Friday, everyone! This is the last Featured Artist Friday until the New Year, and I am pleased to introduce you to another wonderful author I have met through the Clean Indie Reads group, Jennifer Kibble, author of the YA fantasy adventure: Phoenix Element: Mages of Vane.Vane is a magic school for the talented, the elite, and those who are deemed too powerful to walk around the known galaxy freely. Anya journeys to this school in hopes to rid her mind from the entity known as Ashima. It works, as far as she knows, however the mages will not allow Anya to leave their school. So starts her life as a Mage of Vane. Unfortunately for our hero, she is standing at the brink of a war that has been brewing for centuries.When and why did you start writing?
I was in the 5th grade. Our assignment was simple. Get a composition book and write stories in it. I took that composition book and ran away with it. I would sit on a brown beanbag in class and just write. It was an amazing escape from reality. A way to create adventures without ever leaving the room. I still have that composition book. Perhaps I'll make something out of that one day.

Please describe your ideal place to write.
All I need is some alone time and my headphones screaming music into my ears. I work better when there isn't anyone else around. I've tried writing with someone else in the room, but it doesn't pan out. Any secluded place would be ideal!

How do ideas come to you?
The majority of my ideas come from my dreams. The hardest part is remembering what I dreamt the night before and turning it into words.

What is something (book, short story, poem, paragraph, sentence) that you wish YOU had written, and why?
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Loved that book. Being a gamer myself, it embodies a world that I wish I had came up with. He took what could happen with video games and made it a realistic, plausible future.

Would you be willing to share an excerpt from your latest book?
From Mages of Vane, Chapter five:

Ashima laughs. “Okay, there are a lot of good parts to your little tragedy but this one is too ironic. That night when I took over Anya’s body and started to kill those closest to her, you were there and saw everything. Instead of helping her out, you ran. You had a mission to do and you ran from it. In an event where I would take over a host and begin to manifest, your mission was to destroy me. But you couldn’t do it, could you? And you know what would have happened if you did, right? Nothing would have happened. All the pain caused to so many people that you came across in your life would have never happened. You could have stopped everything from happening. So many lives ruined because you ran from your own destiny. You know what’s funny about the whole thing? You could have stopped me. There would still have been a chance that Anya would have been reincarnated. And maybe she would have been able to lead a normal life, like everyone else could have done, but no, that reality never came to be. Plus you couldn't have stopped me anyway. Now here we are, the one you swore to save dying in your arms and I am free. Granted, I had to wait a few hundred years, but I am patient.”

Kyle, or Kasiff as Ashima called him, curls his hand into a fist. I can feel sparks of electricity radiating from it. His body was tensing up as Ashima spoke.

“Not dying,” I mutter, my mouth dry from dehydration. I'm unaware of how much time has passed or when Kyle arrived. How did he know I was in trouble?

What do you do when you’re NOT writing?
When I don't have a pen in my hand (or fingers to the keys), I work as a cook at a local casino. I have the battle scars to prove it too. Not sure which is  worse: a papercut or knife cut. I enjoy playing video games and I am currently learning how to draw. Makes me wish I paid attention in art class!

Are you working on anything new, and would you be willing to tell us about it?
I am writing out the first draft to the third book in the Phoenix Element series. I also have an idea for a science fiction (maybe romance) book. Now that I think of it, I might go ahead and put together the short stories that I wrote when I was younger. Worth a shot. My mind is always turning with ideas, but time isn't giving me a lot of wiggle room.

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?
I am a huge fan of Superman icecream. I first had it when I was a kid. They used to sell it at KMart. Years went by before I had it again. Thankfully there is a shop nearby that sells it. Superman ice cream is rare in the south.

Storms: awesome or terrifying?
Being from Florida, I've been though a few powerful storms. One of which was hurricane Andrew in 1992. My parents and I left our home and went west to my grandparents' house. I was more worried about my cats than myself. A few of them were outside cats and we weren't able to get them inside before we left. Thankfully they, and my home made it through the hurricane. When I was younger, I had a nightmare about a tornado. It caused me to have a fear of storms, especially if there is heavy wind involved. These days I worry less about the storms. Having a dog does that. I have to protect him from the thunder by spending time in the closet with him.Thanks for participating in Featured Artist Fridays, Jennifer. Best of luck on your writing projects!If The Mages of Vane sounds interesting to you, Jennifer is running a giveaway of the book tomorrow on Amazon! Make sure you swing by and enter! Also, you can get $4.00 off HERE by using this discount code: 68K4VN9JTo learn more about The Phoenix Element series, you can visit Jennifer's website or facebook page.