Blog Blitz: Kingdom of the Feared by Kerri Maniscalco (Spotlight!)

About Kerri Maniscalco

Kerri Maniscalco is an American young adult author best known for the Stalking Jack the Ripper quartet; a series of gothic thrillers. Her next series Kingdom of the Wicked, a young adult fantasy, is slated for a fall 2020 release.

Maniscalco grew up New York’s scenic Hudson Valley and later attended college in New York City, studying Fine Art before transferring into Communication Design at F.I.T. She was drawn to art from an early age and enjoys all aspects of design.

Her grandmother was an avid reader who instilled a love of books in her mother who passed it along to both of her daughters. Growing up, Maniscalco’s parents took her and her sister Kelli to libraries and bookstores most weekends where she fell in love with stories. To this day her mom and dad gift her with a new leather-bound book each Christmas to add to her own library, and it’s one of her favorite family traditions.

As a child, her grandmother was chronically ill, and taught the importance of always being able to escape on an adventure between the pages of a book, regardless of any physical limitations.

Maniscalco credits her grandmother with fostering her imagination—a stream wasn’t just a stream, it was a babbling brook. And if she looked closely enough, her grandmother promised she might see fairies dancing around the ring of flowers in the backyard.

Her father, a retired chiropractor, had anatomy books and sculptures in his office, which introduced her to her interest in forensics when she was a teen. She was fascinated with his stories of college, where he studied cadavers as part of his degree. It would later spark the idea for her medical-minded heroine, Audrey Rose.

At one point in college, Maniscalco switched schools and majors, and took Criminal Justice and Science courses, and considered becoming a forensic psychologist. She ultimately decided to turn her love of reading and writing into a career as a novelist instead.

Her mother is another source of inspiration, showing, by example, the many definitions of a strong, capable woman.

Maniscalco’s father is Sicilian, and her mother is mostly of Irish descent with Eastern European and distant Spanish and Jewish roots. She is third generation American on both sides, and celebrates Italian American traditions.

When she’s not writing, one of her favorite places to be is in her kitchen, cooking recipes passed on from her grandmother and creating new ones. Her second favorite thing is her sister’s store, Dogwood Lane Boutique, where she purchases clothes for book events and accessories for her home. In May 2019 she released a few Stalking Jack the Ripper series inspired items she designed to sell exclusively through her sister’s store and online.

In the acknowledgments of Hunting Prince Dracula, Maniscalco revealed that she has chronic Lyme Disease. An often debilitating condition classified as an invisible disability. She first began getting ill during the Stalking Jack the Ripper tour, before collapsing that winter and getting diagnosed in January 2017. It was at its worst while she edited Hunting Prince Dracula, and drafted Escaping from Houdini.

She talks openly and freely about it online and at events, and is currently in remission, though symptoms and flare ups occur if she’s not vigilant about putting her health first. She credits a strict keto diet with greatly mitigating/eliminating chronic pain and other debilitating symptoms of the disease.

One of the main reasons Maniscalco gave Audrey Rose a chronic condition is so readers who also have a disability–or chronic illness–could see themselves as the hero/heroine in a book.

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