This world needs more readers. Readers are open-minded, imaginative, and more empathetic. Picking up a book, whether one of Jen's fantasy-fueled novels or someone else's thriller, puts another person's perspective of the world in your hands. (Unless you're telepathic, then you've already experienced being in another person's head. Good thing about books? Organized thoughts. Bad thing about people's heads? Unorganized chaos, judging from my own stream.)

Pick up a book and enter a new world. See Tibet without getting on an airplane. (Good for those of you who are afraid to fly.) Live with cannibals without getting eaten. (Good for those of you who don't want to be eaten.) Become a lion-tamer, an assassin, or a lover. Ride a dragon, eat a dinosaur (Come on, who hasn't wondered what they taste like?), or fall in love with a man who looks like Fabio.

Do it from the comfort of your couch, your bed, the hard, plastic seat on the subway next to the man dressed in pink taffeta, singing songs about chickens. Whatever you do, don't stop reading. And if you haven't started reading, grab a book!

Jen's love for reading came from her mom, who valued books above all things (except maybe the Dallas Cowboys and Michael Jordan.) She writes for the same reason some people run marathons, climb mountains, sculpt, paint, or put on suits of Mentos and jump into vats of Coke: because there is a fire burning inside her that doesn't let her NOT do these things. Writing is necessary, like breathing or double chocolate chip cookies and perfectly salted potato chips.
Reading is not a lost pastime and Jen refuses to believe that something so magical could ever go away. Even during the zombie apocalypse, she will be reading. She will just have to learn how to wield an ax in one hand while holding her book in the other.

Jen lives in the Panhandle of Nebraska, with her boys, her cats, her goldfish Reggie and a large supply of books that help insulate the house in the winter and expand her mind.

She loves connecting on Twitter and Facebook. You can also send her email and she'll write back. Visit www.JenniferPonce.com to figure out how to do all of the above.

Jen. Writer of kick ass women and oogy monsters. One-handed, ax-wielding zombie hunter/reader.