All right loyal fans and followers. It is that time of the week again. An Honest Lie Volume 2: Delusions of Insignificance is that much closer publication. So far we’ve learned that some of us write “to differentiate ourselves(ed) from the madding crowd” and others suffer the yoke because we simply cannot stop slaving away. Maybe one day I will tell you all why I write, but this week, we have another of our talented writers I would like to introduce you to. Jessica Stilling hails from Manhattan where she lives and writes supported by a loving husband and son. When I got her interview mixed up with Author Jessica Dunn she graciously forgave me and set the record straight. Here is what she really had to say.

Open Heart Publishing: I understand you are a busy woman, so I won’t keep you long. AHL V2 is titled Delusions of Insignificance. What do you feel is a delusion of insignificance?

Jessica Stilling: I feel as if I should focus on the delusion part first. It’s like faking out a lie detector test and actually believing everything you’re saying. Then, with respect to the insignificance, it’s melding it in with your life.

OHP: What is An Honest Lie?

J.S.: An Honest Lie is something that becomes a part of who you are. It’s no longer a lie, because it’s become real. Though it’s still a lie logically, but logic is no longer important.

OHP: Now I’m going to get right to the hard stuff. I’ve been asking everyone the writer’s question; why do you feel the need to write?

J.S.: I get stories in my head, and little phrases. My characters start to talk to me and I know that they need to exist. I can’t leave them hanging. I feel wrong when I do not write. In fact I stop being able to sleep well when I’m between projects and not really working on anything.

OHP: There are a lot of small publishers out there, why did you decide to submit your work to An Honest Lie?

J.S.: I truly believed this story worked within the parameters of the overall concept of the collection. I believed in this story and I had a feeling in my gut. I also enjoyed An Honest Lie I.

OHP: We are so glad you checked it out. I really enjoyed reading “A Girl Walks into a Bar.” Can you tell us something about your inspiration for this story?

J.S.: My husband called this story horrific; in fact he refused to read it when I asked him to edit the piece before I sent it out on submission. He still hasn’t read it and I’m not sure he’s ever going to read it. The story is about many things, but what disturbed him most was the loss of a child. We’d just had our son when I wrote the story and I think it was my way of dealing with this sudden fear that I had of losing him. He’s two years old now and I’m (for the most part) over that new mother fear of walking into the bedroom to find that your child has stopped breathing, but I still check him once a night. This story is also about the nature of storytelling. It deals with the fact that you can tell one person’s story and still not get to the heart of who they are, the true heart of their story. Rebecca never knows who Ryan is because he never shares with her his story. She shares her story and so he is able to connect with her, but he never shares his story with her, and so she’s just the girl who walks into the bar to him. Ryan never really shares his story with himself either, it’s only Claire who knows it and understands him, which is why she seems so together at the end while he’s still falling apart.

OHP: We plan on working closely with the authors we choose for these volumes, should they wish to publish more stuff with us. Do you have any exciting projects in the works your fans might wish to know about?

J.S.: I write a lot. I write a little too much. I have a novel that my agent has been shopping for a while called Alice Down the Basement Window, a literary retelling of Alice in Wonderland. I also have a short story collection that I’m looking into shopping to small presses on my own in a little while. The collection, called Skimmable Cities, is a collection of short stories dealing with cities and city life. It doesn’t adhere to all those clichés, but it does deal with urbanness and how that affects how people live. The people in the stories have all lost something and in their surroundings they hope to perhaps find something else. I also just…well I don’t want to say finished, but I’ve come a long way to finishing a novel that I’ve been working on for a great many years, since I was in college, for my MFA thesis. The novel, God on the Wall, is about three boys growing up in Northern Ireland in 1982 during the Troubles. It’s about family and war and religion and friendship, brothers and brotherhoods and art. That’s a little grandiose I know, but I think history has a way of being grand on its own.

OHP: Wow you do write a lot where do you draw your inspiration from?

J.S.: Sometimes from the people around me and the world that I see. I like being able to take images and ideas, scenes from my life and stories that I hear and twist and turn them around until they’re something else entirely. It’s a lot like impressionism in that way, writing. To write is to take the world, the truth, and hold it under water for a while, until it’s grasping for breath. That’s when you’ve made it your own and you can really play with it.

OHP: Almost all writers are inspired by “one who came before”, who would you say is your writing mentor/ hero?

J.S.: Linsey Abrams and Felicia Bonaparte from City College.

OHP: As much as we love some, there are always those we can’t stand, do you have a writing nemesis?

J.S.: Not at the moment. I just finished my MFA and I realize, logically, that we’re all trying to do the same thing. That there are only so many spots for “successful writer” that are going to be filled, but I don’t find myself in competition with them. I prefer to like these people.

OHP: Okay we are working up o the home stretch. I only have a few more questions for you. What do you feel about the following quote “Imagination is more important than knowledge?”

J.S.: When it comes to fiction writing this is definitely true. You can’t gain imagination. It has to be in you. It is the foundation for all great works. In fact imagination is the foundation of knowledge. Someone had to imagine any piece of information we have about the universe before they went about proving it. Also, you can look things up; you can get the knowledge you need to write a piece. You can’t look imagination up and come up with a great character or plot point.

OHP: Have you ever contemplated becoming involved in a revolution?

J.S.: Funny you should ask this question because I’m teaching a class I compiled next semester called Revolutionary Memoir. We’ll be reading Eamon Collins’ IRA memoir Killing Rage, Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, Malcolm X’s Autobiography, Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, Nien Cheng’s Life and Death in Shanghai and Ishmael Beah’s Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, which brought me to tears, and I don’t cry easily when reading a memoir. I think revolution is an important part of the human condition. All people should want to throw off the chains of society at some point. Do I think I’d become involved in a revolution? Well, I haven’t yet and there’s plenty going on right now to start a revolution over.

OHP: That’s quite a reading list there. Do you think writers should call Ernest Hemmingway, Papa?

J.S.: I think there are other writers one could call Papa or Mama in the same way. It’s the job of all writers to blast through the world and other writers may connect better with different mentors.

OHP: According to Anatole France “To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture,” in your opinion what do you believe is worth dying for? What do you believe is worth living for?

J.S.: I’d die for my son, but I think that’s just selfish, because I could not live without him. Would I die for anything else…I don’t know. There’s a lot worth living for. My work is one thing, my family is another. Living in New York City sometimes makes my life more wonderful. Though to be a true New Yorker I think you have to simultaneously be head over heels in love with the city and absolutely despise it in the same breath.

OHP: Mark twain once said that “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” What do you believe he meant by that?

J.S.: I think it’s the same impressionism idea. What we see is only so much and while there is a “real world” that’s not what art is about. It’s about the real world according to person X. Everyone has equal access to the real world, not everyone has equal access to ideas and imagination.

OHP: Most people have two stories for doing anything… a plausible excuse and the real reason, why do you really write?

J.S.: It’s easier (and better) than living in the world.

Jessica Stilling enjoys skiing, running, and wandering aimlessly, preferably in quiet, restful places. She currently lives in New York City, which can be surprisingly quiet and restful. Ms. Stilling is a very recent graduate of the MFA program at City College of the City University of New York and currently teaches there. She has been an editor for The Muse Apprenticeship Guild, The Olive Tree Review and The Castalia Project online zine, her brief attempt at founding a literary journal in college. She has been previously published in many publications including The Mini-Mag, City Writers, Children, Churches and Daddies, Birmingham Words, Open Wide, The Hawai’i Pacific Review, Audience, Existere, Cause and Effect, The Blotter, Skyline Review and Kudzu. A story of hers was a finalist in the Summer Literary Seminars Kenya Contest and she is the winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts Chapter One award for her unpublished novel, Alice Down the Basement Window, which is currently being represented by Foundry Literary and Media. She lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her husband Adam and her son Addison.