Come listen to – or watch – Episode 7 of my podcast, 12 Minutes (or less!) with the Author. Jennifer Brasington-Crowley’s latest book, Nightmare, was released on June 13, 2023. I was lucky enough to receive an advanced copy of the book – which is fabulous – and then I got even luckier: the author agreed to an interview! Transcript and link to the Spotify podcast episode below. The podcast is also on YouTube (video below).
Episode 7, on Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/12-minutes-or-less/episodes/Episode-7-Nightmare-is-here–An-interview-with-author-Jennifer-Brasington-Crowley-e25mjqr
This podcast episode is available on YouTube as well. Find it here: https://youtu.be/q5i8jemd8eo
Here are important links for YOU!
Link to Nightmare on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Jennifer-Brasington-Crowley-ebook/dp/B0C4Q4DDD3/
Link to all of Jennifer’s books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00E6XN608/allbooks
Find Jennifer on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brasingtonbooks/
The author’s website: http://www.sunnyvillezoo.com/
About Nightmare, by Jennifer Brasington-Crowley
This is not a bisexual romance.
This is not a coming-of-age story.
This is not a family drama.
This is not a cautionary tale.
This is Jake’s Nightmare.
When 16-year-old Jacob “Chubby Cubby” Nightingale runs away from his upper-middle-class home in Terrace Park, he thinks he’s fled his worst demons. What he doesn’t know is he hasn’t even faced them yet. Follow Jacob from teen runaway to teen heartthrob fronting a successful metal band, and the subsequent rise and fall of alter ego Jake Nightmare.
You fell for him in Cayman Island. You felt for him in Nightingale. Now, fear for him as Jacob Nightingale faces his worst Nightmare – the past.
Transcript:
Welcome to 12 Minutes (or less!) with the Author. I’m your host, T.L. Brown, but you can call me Tracy. Let’s get started.
T.L. Brown: Hey, everyone! Welcome to today’s podcast episode. I have a special guest author, Jennifer Brasington-Crowley. Her latest book, Nightmare, was just released on June 13th and can be found on Amazon. Jennifer is here to talk about her new book.
Jennifer is an author, illustrator, and Slytherin. She is a little obsessive about things like music and animals and can’t help but sneak miniature biology lessons into all of her books. Author of The Lindsay and Laney Lion Children’s Book series, as well as contemporary fiction Raven Song, BirdSong, Hell’s Bells, Stillwaters, Cayman Island – one of my favorites – Nightingale, and now Nightmare (plus others). You can learn more about Jennifer at www.sunnyvillezoo.com and on her author page at Amazon. That link will be included in the caption that goes along with this podcast episode. All of Jennifer’s books – ebooks and paperbacks – are available on Amazon. Her ebooks are also in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program. So, I’m very excited, Jennifer. Thank you for agreeing to come on 12 Minutes (or less!) with the Author.
Jennifer Brasington-Crowley: Thank you, Tracy. Thanks for having me. I’m a big fan of yours, of both of your book series. So, I’m really excited to be here.
T.L. Brown: Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Let’s get right to it.
Your book, your latest book, Nightmare, just released on June 13th, and I’ve already read it because you were kind enough to give me an advanced copy so I could peek at it. I know how great it is. I would like you to tell us about Nightmare and a little bit about why you wrote it.
Jennifer Brasington-Crowley: Nightmare just released on June 13th. There is a big reason behind it releasing on June 13th. That just happens to be the very unlucky birthday of almost all of my main characters in all of my series. Jake Nightmare – or Jay Nightingale or Jacob Nightingale – he’s got a lot of different names…Or Cubby Nightingale! He’s another one of the names. I did have a reader say to me: boy, he has got a lot of names.
Jake was born on unlucky June 13th, so I thought: what a better day to release it! Nightmare is the story of little 16-year-old Chubby Cubby Nightingale (Jake/Jay), and he runs away from home. He runs away because he’s being bullied, and he thinks that’s the only answer. What ends up happening to poor Chubby Cubby is that he really ends up facing a lot more of his demons than he ever imagined would happen.
A very just short synopsis is he runs away to California to move in with his brother, and his brother has a record label. He ends up just falling into the music business with his brother, and things kind of tumble down and down, and spiral down and down and down. This is a book that just hits on a lot of very dark themes. I had one reader tell me that it was probably the darkest book I’ve written. And I kind of agree with that. There’s sometimes I think, man, this is such a downer – is anybody going to find any joy in this book at all? I will say that it does end on an up note.
(laughter)
It just doesn’t spiral into the ground and stay there.
But part of the reason I wrote this book was to hit on a lot of these dark themes. It goes into prescription drug abuse. It talks a lot about alcoholism. There’s a lot of sexual coercion in there. There is a sexual assault from a female on a male, which is something that, you know, you don’t see a whole lot of. It’s not really brought to light. There were just a lot of important issues I thought that really needed to be brought into the light. And so I wrote this book.
Another reason I chose this book is because, like we were saying before we got on the air here, I have a couple of different main characters that people seem to really like. One of them is from the Raven Song series – Raven, the main character. And then here’s Jake Nightmare/Jay Nightingale – and he is from another series. The fact that people liked Jay more than Raven blew my mind because Raven is fun. He’s funny; he’s erratic. He’s got a lot of energy. And Jay, he’s just so quiet, so unassuming, and it just…I was so surprised that people liked him more, so I thought, you know what? Let’s just tell his story.
T.L. Brown: And it’s a fabulous story. As I said, I was lucky enough to pre-read it, and I agree…yeah. It got really dark. Gritty! I would use the word gritty. But at the same time, and this is what I love about your writing, Jennifer, you will break your readers’ hearts, but you always stitch them back together. And I think that is a skill and a talent unlike any that I’ve seen. So, even though it is dark, there is light. And as you said, at the ending, there is definitely light.
Jennifer Brasington-Crowley: Thank you.
T.L. Brown: So, tell us about the Stillwaters series, because as you mentioned, your character in Nightmare, Jake – you know, Jake Nightmare/Jay Nightingale – Jay, the grown-up version of him, he is in your Stillwaters series, which I absolutely love. Once again, he’s in Cayman Island, one of my favorites! Tell us about the Stillwater series.
Jennifer Brasington-Crowley: Stillwaters is really kind of a different series. I started writing this because I have premonition dreams. They’re not scary premonition dreams. My premonition dreams are very boring, you know, more like I’m going to get a call from the doctor’s office or somebody’s going to drop a can of peaches. I mean, it’s just very boring. But then I also have this very weird curse attached to my books where it seems like oftentimes, when I write down the name of a famous celebrity, they end up dying.
So, I was thinking about these things, and I thought, how would it be to combine and have a person, a character who has premonition dreams that end in death? And so that’s where that story started – with Jonathan Sharpe (one of the main characters in Stillwaters), and he has these premonition dreams. When he dreams, somebody dies, and when he wakes up, that dream has come true.
The problem with this book (Stillwaters) is that it hits people one way or the other because I call it a romance. Romance readers hate it. (laughs) They say this is not a romance. Just because two people, you know, might get between the sheets a few times here and there, that does not a romance make. But to me, it was my version of a Romeo and Juliet. I love a tragic romance. My favorite type of book is a tragic romance, so I thought, well here, I’m going to write my own Romeo and Juliet. And yeah, it has gotten mixed reviews.
T.L. Brown: And I will go on record as saying that I don’t read a lot of romance, so I can’t speak to that. And it was again dark, but yeah, it just, it was so creative and well done. And of course, Stillwaters…Stillwaters is the series name. The first book is Stillwaters, then goes Cayman Island, then it goes to Nightingale, and that series is related to Nightmare, your latest book.
Jennifer Brasington-Crowley: Yes.
T.L. Brown: I want to go to my next question, if I may? Can you tell us what’s next? What are you getting ready to work on, or if you’re not getting ready to work on anything, what are you thinking about as your next writing project?
Jennifer Brasington-Crowley: Well, I’m kind of thinking about that character I mentioned before, Raven. Raven Xerces is a rock star. He lives hard, he lives fast, but he’s starting to slow down. And part of me thinks, how fun would it be to write a book about him retiring from the music business, and moving to the suburbs, raising some kids, and being, you know, the T-ball coach. Going to the PTA meetings, you know…just a big giant fish-out-of-water type of book, something after the downward spiral that is Nightmare. Something that will not only bring readers of mine back up (laughs) but would bring me back up, too – because, as you know, as a writer, when you write hard stuff, it does take a toll on you emotionally.
T.L. Brown: It really does. And because you said that, I’m going to earmark a future episode where we talk about the emotional toll on the writer. You are so right. You are. You are brilliant, though.
(more laughs)
Well, we are nearing the end of our podcast episode, so I want to go through a few things so readers can find you and your books and especially Nightmare, which was just released on June 13th. Thank you so much, Jennifer. I appreciate it.
Listeners! Go to Amazon: Jennifer Brasington Crowley. All her books are there – paperbacks and ebooks, and her ebooks are in Kindle Unlimited, too. You can find links to Amazon in this podcast description, and also you can find her links to social media, which is Instagram. That’s where I met Jennifer. So, make sure that if you’re on Instagram, you are following @BrasingtonBooks. And lastly, you can also go to her website – once again that is www.sunnyvillezoo.com. Jennifer, thank you. I’m so glad you were on today’s show.
Jennifer Brasington-Crowley: Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
T.L. Brown: Awesome. Thanks for listening, readers. Be well!
This has been 12 Minutes (or less!) with the Author. Thanks for listening to today’s episode. Hope you can join me for the next one. Until then, this is Tracy, AKA author T.L. Brown, signing off.
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