Ben Jonjak

As I have said before, I believe the most important aspect of independent publishing is connecting an author with his/her audience. To that end, I think it is only fair that I give you a bit of information about myself and my philosophies on writing.

I graduated from the University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire with a degree in English literature and a minor in Physics. By some miracle I managed to graduate Summa Cum Laude even though I have never satisfactorily mastered comma rules. I once had a professor tell me that if ten English professors corrected the same unedited text, the results would all be punctuated differently, but they'd all be correct. Maybe it's my background in Physics, but I really just don't have the patience to master rules that are not consistently held. Because of that I feel it would be hypocritical to judge a book too harshly on the grounds of poor grammar. That being said, there are limits for all tolerances, but my limits are probably farther out there than the majority. In my opinion, the whole spirit of independent publishing is to make your work available as inexpensively as possible for the purpose of refining your craft. I feel it would be foolish to spend hundreds of dollars to have your work professionally edited, and the fact is, a lot of people who think they are helping you with their advice are actually cutting out the soul of your work. It is better to leave your writing intact with a few comma errors, than it is to create a grammatically perfect monster that bears no resemblance to your initial inspiration.

I published my first book, Glorious Failure, in the final semester of my senior year at college. It is kind of a mess of a book, but it has been fairly well received by some. The title is meant to be kind of a joke, although it works thematically with the content of the book, my intention was always to say that I went into writing it with the knowledge that I didn't know what I was doing. You have to fail before you succeed, and if you succeed eventually your initial failures become glorious. It's a nice sentiment, but I'm still working on the success part.

I have high hopes for my most recent book, Roland, about a delusional janitor who, out of the kindness of his soul, runs a series of orphanages in third world countries and, out of the madness in his mind, often gets into life or death battles with things such as the four horsemen of the apocalypse and enraged peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It's a comedy, and it's the first book where I've been able to figure out a plot that accommodates my bizarre writing style.

After college I moved to Lima, Peru, because I can live here for next to nothing and concentrate on my writing in relative peace. Furthermore, just by living here I am learning to speak Spanish, a skill that has already brought me more job offers than my college degree.