Welcome to BookEnds, Jocelyn Rish!

What genres do you write? Read?

I read horror/mystery/thriller for all ages, and for years I’ve been writing scary mysteries for YA and MG. So it feels especially weird that I finally landed an agent with a funny nonfiction picture book! 

Plotter or pantster?

Total pantser. I get all the excellent arguments for being a plotter, but for me that ruins the fun of discovering the story as I write, even if it does mean more work during revisions. 

Synopses, love them or hate ‘em?

Haaaate! 

I actually love writing pitches, especially Twitter pitches. I even made a series of videos with advice about writing them (https://youtu.be/6Y0UsxZn-7w). And I enjoy writing queries, too, which I know is not on most people’s top ten list. But writing a synopsis is awful. They always end up sounding like an adult from a Charlie Brown cartoon – Wah wah wah wah waaah. 

Do you have a writing playlist or a vision board?  If so, what’s on them?

No, I’m boring. I can’t write with any music playing (not even scores), and vision boards have never been my thing.

Drink of choice when writing? When not writing?

Wine while writing in the evening and coffee for late-night writing. 

Day or Night writer?

I’m an extreme night owl – basically venturing into vampire territory. I write all through the night and crawl into bed when the sun rises. 

Twitter or Instagram? Or Facebook? Where can we find you? 

I’m on Twitter at @JocelynRish (https://twitter.com/JocelynRish).

I’m not very good at taking photos (I usually steal them from my sister), but I do have an Instagram account at jocelynrish (https://www.instagram.com/jocelynrish/).

I don’t have an author page on Facebook, but I do run a Facebook group called Transmedia Mutts, where we discuss all kinds of stuff related to writing (and share pics of cute dogs … that I stole from my sister). Find us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/transmediamutts/

And my website is https://www.jocelynrish.com.

If you could meet any author, living or dead, who would you want to meet and why?

I’ve actually been extremely lucky because while I was a freelancer for MTV News and Interview Coordinator for Adventures in YA Publishing, I was able to attend YALLFest and interview many authors I admire and adore, including longtime favs R. L. Stine (https://www.mtv.com/news/2548169/r-l-stine-goosebumps-movie-interview/) and Jonathan Stroud (https://www.adventuresinyapublishing.com/2016/11/yallfest-interview-with-jonathan-stroud.html). But the one author I’d still love to meet is Stephen King. I’ve been reading his books since I was waaay too young to be reading Stephen King, and On Writingwas so helpful when I was just starting to get serious about writing. I think any conversation with him would be fascinating. If I was actually able to form words.