G.S Jennsen: WR native and top-rated science fiction author

Many of us have heard the saying “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Warner Robins native G.S Jennsen recently found this to be true.

Jennsen attended The Westfield School from Kindergarten until freshmen year of high school, then she then transferred and graduated from First Presbyterian Day School in Macon. Jennsen pursued a higher education at the University of Georgia graduating with a degree in law.

Over the next seven years, she practiced law as a corporate attorney. Her interests then changed to going back to school to receive her Master’s in software engineering. Soon after receiving her Master’s, her husband was presented job opportunity in Colorado as an electrical engineer.

Jennsen quit practicing law and changed her career to freelance work such as editing and computer programming. It was then that she started thinking back to her first two interests in life: reading and writing.

“When I began my software engineering career making programs for computers,” said Jennsen. “That was the first time I had ever made something from scratch. You know, creating something from nothing. I began thinking maybe I should write a book.”

Jennsen said she was veracious reader since she was a child. She would read all the time, and eventually dallied with writing in high school and in college. Science fiction has always been her favorite.

“I started planning to write my first piece in the summer of 2013,” said Jennsen. “When coming up with my story, I realized that it was to be a trilogy. I then set up a website to get the word out by posting excerpts from the first book, and then it was published on March 23, 2014.”

Jennsen recently completed the trilogy on that same day a year later, March 23, 2015. The trilogy “Aurora Rising” is set 300 years in the future and characterized as a galaxy-spanning space opera. Jennsen said that her life has turned upside down (in a good way) after publishing her work.

“This is the most fulfilling and exciting thing I have ever done,” said Jennsen. “When I published the first book I had maybe 100 readers who subscribed to my website to now thousands of strangers contacting me and thanking me for my work.”

Jennsen is also independently published. That is what she has loved most about her journey as an author so far.

“Seven years ago, a writer didn’t have the option to publish on their own,” said Jennsen. “They would have to promote and land a publishing deal. That’s very difficult proposition, even for great writers. With the Kindle, the general explosion of Ebooks and the rise of the internet, writers now have a better chance of sharing their work.”

Jennsen stated that Amazon was the first to blaze the trail where people could publish their own books.

“My books are actually print on demand on Amazon,” said Jennsen. “I set up a file with the company, a person orders the book, and it’s printed that afternoon and sent in the mail. It is absolutely wonderful thing, and gives those writers who were told ‘no’ hundreds of times a chance. Again, it is created something from scratch, and it means more knowing that it has all been done by me.”

Jennsen is in the writing business for the “long haul” now. A month ago, she announced on her blog she plans to write two trilogies set in the same universe as the first one.

She is also a top-rated science fiction author on Amazon. To learn more about Jennsen and her books you can visit her website at www.gsjennsen.com.

HHJ News