My First Story
with author Kristin Battestella
Age first started writing: about 8
Location of first writing: Apparently I was a precocious child from rural New Jersey inviting everyone to “Collect ’em All!” for my illustrious, illustrated classics from “One Night” to “The Red Forest”, titles clearly inspired by my farm spooky rearing.
| Atmosphere:
I recall “The Red Forest” was inspired by the reflection of the trees on my mother’s car, but I seemed to have made a very early leap into fantasy or horror with “The Frosted Opal” and “Little Wendy” or “Molly Mummy.” I guess I was just a whimsical or scary sponge. |
| My first story/Basic plot:
|
| What did you think of the story then?
My word I thought they were so fantastic then with a moral and radical concepts that needed to be signed, dated, and preserved for posterity! |
| What do you think of the story now?
They are pathetic. But in a laughably good way. At one point as a teenager, I was going to collect them in a storybook called “Idiotic Stories for Gullible Children” but of course that was just as bad. |
| How did the story help you on the road to writing?
I think even if the stories were bad, it was the idea that I couldn’t remember them all or just keep them in my head and had to write them down. I had crazy notions that I was working for a publisher called “Kids Kids Kids” where I would just churn out classics daily. (My dad told me that wasn’t how things worked and why that couldn’t be my fictitious publisher’s name when I designed a logo with “KKKs”!!) But the idea of getting things on the page that needed work, and to be good. I started drawing more SF world building ships and costumes and got into documenting what I was doing before writing short stories and submitting them to kid writing contests. |
| Current work:
Actually my focus has been on non fiction, the ten year anniversary of my review blog I Think, Therefore I Review sort of snuck up on me, so I’ve been in celebration mode there! I’ve found I go in phases between fiction and non-fiction. My last vampire series Fate and Fangs is available on Amazon. |
“The Adventures of The M&M Gang” (with an ice cream cone on the cover for some reason!) was the longest one written for a school project when I was in the fourth grade. Compared to the other one page “One Night” stories I think it was probably an improvement but I don’t remember what it was about beyond a group of kids who’s names all began with M. They solved mysteries that weren’t really mysteries, objects lost and found short of lameness.
Kristin Battestella writes for her hometown newspaper The Cumberland County Reminder and has been writing non-fiction, speculative fiction, dark fantasy, paranormal, and horror for almost twenty years. Along with numerous sports articles, print essays, online reviews, and pen name fiction, Kristin’s first eBook was published in 2005. She is a member of the New Jersey Authors Network, founder of the South Jersey Women Authors, and part of the podcast at Horror Addicts.net. Her 7 book sequel series Fate and Fangs is available now with Muse It Up Publishing.
Next time, you’ll hear from author Rish Outfield.
Emz Newz 