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MEET CYNTHIA JAYNES OMOLOLU
by Bonnie O'Brian

What did you most like to do when you were a child?

Cynthia Jaynes Omololu

I was a huge reader and apparently not very social. My mom always says that she’d tell me to put the book down and go out to play. Half an hour later, I’d be back on the couch, book in hand. “I thought I told you to go out and play,” she’d say. “I did,” I’d say, sticking my nose back into my story.

If you didn’t write as a child, then when did you start writing and what inspired you to start?

I was a huge reader, but it never occurred to me to be a writer. I was an English major in college, but just because I liked to read so much. It wasn’t until after my kids were born that I thought to give it a try. After all, how hard could it be to write a children’s book?

What was your first job when you graduated from college?

I worked for a fashion designer named Jessica McClintock, in her fragrance division. From there, I worked for a travel agency and for a weekly newspaper in San Francisco. I’ve also been a waitress, a barrista and a salesclerk at Sea World.

Was your first book accepted immediately? or did you experience a number of rejections?

I was lucky enough to get my picture book pulled from the slush pile on the second submission. Before that, I’d written a few other books that I’d gotten rejections on, so I’m no stranger to the rejection letter. After that, I got an agent and luckily she only shows me the rejections I need to see.

Where do you get your ideas?

Pretty much everywhere. For my young adult novels, I like to take a piece from real life and then “What If” it until the kernel of a story starts to form. The idea for my novel DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS came from a magazine article that I read while I was on an airplane.

What gave you the idea for WHEN IT’S SIX O’CLOCK IN SAN FRANCISCO?

That is my picture book, and it came about because my kids have relatives in several other countries. They would ask what their cousins were doing at that moment and the idea for a story was born.
 
Do you work on more than one book at a time?

No, I can only focus on one book at a time. I get so wrapped up in writing a novel that I’m constantly speaking dialogue out loud and thinking about the characters every spare minute.

Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?

It depends on where I am in the process. For novels, I have a rather long discovery process so I spend a lot of time thinking about the characters and the story and doing any research that needs to be done. That is a bit more fluid. When I’m actually writing, I try for a specific word count – usually at least 2k that I want to get done every day. I’m lucky enough to work from home, so I try to do it while the kids are in school, although I’ve been known to get some of my best work done around midnight.

When is your next book going to be in book stores?