Not going to lie, Jason Preu is one of my all time favorite writers. The fact he happens to live in my same town, and I’m lucky enough to call him a friend is mind blowing. He’s the only poet on earth that I religiously read. He also happens to be the host of the Lit KC podcast. He’s done interviews with loads of Kansas City talent including: Samantha Slupski, Jason Ryberg, Adam “Bucho” Rodenberger, Jeanette Powers, James P. McNamara, Jessica Ayala, Craig M. Workman, and M.G. Salazar. And, oh yeah, he came over to my place and interviewed me.
Every time I’m interviewed I learn something. Three things I learned from this interview:
1) When a writer-friend who I know and respect (did I mention Jason is insanely talented?) interviews me I let my guard down. This is the first interview I’ve heard Jessica real-speak, as opposed to professional Jessica voice. Professional Jessica voice appears at the end when we get into the down and dirty about writing The Color Eater. But, the beginning of the episode is definitely the way I sound when talking to my friends over a glass of Scotch. Also my cat, Bear, makes an appearance once or twice in here.
2) Maybe I shouldn’t drink Scotch while being interviewed. Jury’s still out on this bit. It did make it a little less awkward to talk about myself. I am very comfortable talking about my writing and work, but it’s very odd to me to talk about myself outside of those parameters.
3) Don’t assume what you think is boring will be cut or edited. Jason turned on the recorder, and I thought for sure the opening bit about the rock shows I attended when I was younger would be of interest to no one, and assumed Jason would edit that portion out. Much to my surprise it made it into the show. Maybe because it’s a Kansas City focused show and we were talking about KC bands from the late 90s early 200s. Regardless please ignore the fact I dated boys in bands in my early 20s. As a matter of fact you can skip to five minutes in and completely avoid that part of the interview.
And let me give you a few highlights that I liked:
11 minutes in we talk about how to work from home, a weird thing people are always curious about which I don’t discuss in depth very often.
16 minutes in you hear me dorking out about marketing ideas for The Color Eater launch.
29 minutes in is the nitty gritty of my writer origin story—which Jason thought was insane.
And my favorite part…
38 minutes in I get to talk The Color Eater. Jason questions me about it in a way I’ve never discussed on any other platform, and it was really fun.
Listen to the whole show at https://anchor.fm/lit-kc/episodes/Jessica-Conoley.
And, oh yeah, enjoy listening to me talk in my real Jessica voice, because it’s probably not going to happen in an interview again.