Meet Jessica Cage | USA Today Bestselling Author

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jessica Cage and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jessica, other than deciding to work for yourself, what else do you think played a pivotal role in your story?
I would say its the fact that I never tried to compartmentalize my life. A lot of people I see try to split their time to have a perfect balance. I realized early on, as a single mother, that wasn’t going to work. So I adapted a flow style of life balance giving my energy to things that felt most deserving at the time and not beating myself up for things that had to take the back seat. I had to learn to give myself grace and by allowing my schedule to flow with my life, it made things easier. I think this goes against what most people would say here, but that’s what worked best for me.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
First I would say that getting to where I am (and where I am going) was definitely not easy. But nothing worth it ever is. I started writing as a young girl who just wanted to connect to her grandmother through storytelling. When I began writing with the purpose of publishing, I wanted to create stories that I’ve always loved but with characters who looked like me. I grew up on the south side of Chicago and was exposed to so many different cultures and walks of life. The city showed me how diverse the world was. Unfortunately, most of the media I consumed at the time didn’t reflect the world I saw when I walked out of my front door. So I built my brand of fantasy featuring strong characters of color. I did this with the hopes of showing the next generation that they deserve to be represented in these spaces.

The challenges came for me when I was given the advice (quite a few times) to remove my characters from my covers. Advice like this was framed to be helpful, they wanted my work to be more commercially marketable, but it did more harm than anything. I didn’t want to ever modify my purpose for why I was publishing stories. Sticking to my guns made building my career and platform a lot harder, but it was worth it. Because when a reader tells me they read my story and felt seen or that they were able to connect to a character on a deeper level, that means more to me than anything!

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
As a girl who has only been to LA once, I would be the absolute worst person to ask that question. My friend and I would have google as our bestie for the weekend. But if anyone has recommendations, send them my way!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I would like to dedicate this to my readers. Without their support over the years, I wouldn’t be where I am. I have an amazing community of core readers who are instrumental in my success as an author.

Website: https://www.jessicacage.com/

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