Jill of all skills. Renaissance soul. Multi-passionate multi-disciplinarian. ADHD. Whatever you want to call it, the fact is that I wear a lot of hats: indie author, novelist, non-fiction author, freelance writer, editor, graphic designer, social media manager and self-publishing coach. That’s not to mention wife, homesteader, crafter, herbalist, pet mama and homemaker.
Way back in the ’90s, when the web went mainstream, I bought a book on HTML and taught myself how to make a website just to see if I could. I wrote my first novel at 25 and published it online before online publishing was even a thing. After years of making websites and blog themes as a hobby, in 2009 I responded to the recession and getting laid off from a long administrative assistant career by launching a web design business. A few years later, when self-publishing went mainstream thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing, I dove in and taught myself every aspect of book production, from formatting to editing to cover design and book marketing.
That’s the kind of can-do attitude I bring to everything I do. I love a challenge, and I love to learn. After my web and graphic design business was no longer profitable, I switched gears and learned all I could about SEO and effective copy and forged a new career as a business-to-consumer marketing content writer that’s still going strong, supplementing that income when necessary by doing freelance editing work on the side.
More recently, my husband and I packed up and headed to the Ozarks, where we bought five acres of raw, wooded land which we’ve been slowly developing as we build our homestead. And since his debut as a music artist last year, I’ve donned yet another set of hats — music production assistant, social media manager and online music manager.
This year, I took steps towards another long-time dream to operate my own publishing house with the launch of A Glass Darkly Publishing. For now, it serves as the imprint for my own books and the home of my editing and book design services. But in the future I hope to grow it into a full-fledged independent publishing house.
If you’d like to know more, you can scroll down to read my official author bio. And if you’d like to keep in touch, Substack is my main hangout these days, though you can also find me on Instagram here and here.
Author Bio
Jean Marie Bauhaus is both a traditionally-published and indie author of seven novels and counting, as well as a number of novellas and short stories. She’s also a multi-passionate creative and solopreneur who juggles more businesses and writing projects than any sane person should ever attempt at one time.
Born and raised in Oklahoma, she currently makes her home in the middle of the woods deep in the Ozark mountains with her husband of 19 years, a 14/10 German shepherd named Dixie, a sassy black cat named Olive, a calico bunny named Bunsen Honeydew, two box turtles and a flock of chickens. When she’s not writing about ghosts, zombies, vampires and other things that go bump in the night, she can usually be found alongside her husband trying to tame their five acres of wild woodlands and shape it into some kind of homestead, or trading her keyboard for a crochet hook and a ball of yarn and curling up with a mug of tea and a paranormal or fringe theology podcast.
Or she’s at the microwave, re-heating her tea because she forgot to drink it before it got cold. #writerproblems
Jean has a Bachelor of Science in Social Science, Psych/Soc emphasis, which means she’s smart enough to finish college but not smart enough to choose a major that’s actually useful. But it comes in handy for building psychological character profiles and developing post-apocalyptic societies.
Easily spooked by ghost stories as a child, teen Jean faced her fears by forcing herself to watch horror movies and read Stephen King until she fell in love with the genre. As a grown-up (more or less, depending on who you ask), her tastes expanded to include a broader range of speculative fiction and romance, but she keeps coming back to the supernatural and paranormal. She has a strong affection for all things zombie-related, which is a good thing considering she wrote an entire trilogy in that genre.
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Contact: jean@jeanmariebauhaus.com