The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Book of Eternity (The Copper Moon Series) by Jacqueline Pennewill

Episode Date: March 8, 2026

The Book of Eternity (The Copper Moon Series) by Jacqueline Pennewill https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0G1CB22C3 Fans of nostalgic young adult angel fantasy novels will find themselves engrossed in the world of The Fallen and a human teenage girl. An ancient manuscript. A broken girl. After her father’s death, sixteen-year-old Grey reluctantly follows her mother and twin brother to Sleepy Key for the summer. There, she is inexplicably drawn into the shadowed woods, where an ancient manuscript, The Book of Eternity, falls from above. When she touches it, she awakens an ages-old curse and ignites a fight for her soul between two rival factions of powerful angels: The Surge, who uphold order, and The Fallen, who wreak havoc. As Grey struggles to navigate this hidden world, she is irresistibly drawn to Zale, the dark leader of The Fallen. Zale is cursed, and only Grey has the power to set him free. Caught between heaven and hell, Grey discovers she is more than just a pawn. Can a shy, shattered girl save herself, Zale, and the love growing between them before she loses everything? For fans of These Hollow Vows and The Inheritance Games comes a new YA fantasy with a dash of paranormal romance.

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Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, Vosz here from the Chris Vos Show.com. Ladies and gentlemen, the early season that makes official welcome to 60 years, 2800 episodes of the oldest broadcasting podcast that's still, we're active every day, man. We do through three throws a weekday.

So what do you want from us, folks? Refer to show to your family, friends, or relatives. Go to goodrease.com, for chest, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, YouTube.com, Facebook.com, Christch, Chris Voss, and all. those you can find us on the internet. Today, an amazing young lady on the show, we're going to talk about her new debut series book. It is called The Book of Eternity by Jacqueline Penwell.

We're going to get into it with her and find out what this new series is about. And I'm going to find out how many pages are in this thing, because if it's the book of eternity, it might be infinity as the number of pages. Jacqueline, parents called her Happy Wander growing up because she loved to explore something she still does. through imitation. She flies with angels, soon as dolphins,

and rides dragons through magical forests, always with her chit-su, shadow by her side. I graduated at the School of Visual Arts. She has a background in writing and filmmaking, her war-winning short film, and then she was gone, and her SAG Award-winning role

in HBO's Boardwalk Empire reflect her creative spirit. Welcome to the show, Jacqueline. How are you? I'm well, thanks, Chris. Thank you for having me. It's coming. It's great to have you. And you've, you've happily wandered onto the Chris Foss show, as your parents would put it. I have. It's a good place to be. Some people have to be dragged here. Some people come here willingly, but we're glad to have you. So give us any dot com's, website, social media, wherever you want people to get to know you better on the internet. Sure. I have my website, which is jackwell and penable.com. You can go there, learn all about the Book of Eternity and future projects. I also have on Facebook. It's awesome.

Jack Will and Pennewell. And on Instagram, it's Jack Will and Penel author. So, there's reverse there. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside your new novel? My new novel is The Book of Eternity, and I'll just show it here. And to answer your question, it's 278 pages, not in eternity, but it is the first book in the Copper Moon series. And it's about a 16-year-old girl, Gray, who moves to Sleepy Key after the death of her dad. And she moves with her brother and her mother. As she's wandering, her and her brother come across this book, the Book of Eternity, falls in the sky.

And she touches it and therefore sets off the fight for her soul unknowingly. Oh, wow. This is why people don't read books anymore, maybe, because maybe they're worried that they end up in a fight for the soul. I don't know. Very true. I'm going to be careful which books I talk. touch from here. This is why I do Audible, because then I don't have to touch the book.

See, you're smart, you know. I've already got a battle for my soul. I think it's a divorce court. No, I'm just kidding. Tell us about this young girl. What's the name of her again? Her name is Gray. Gray. And why did you choose to write about this story? How did it come to you? What was the inspiration behind it? The inspiration, I guess, was my mom. She had spent a lot of time in hospitals. I spent a lot of I'm in hospitals with my mom. Long story short, you know, you see a loved one in a hospital bed and you know there are so much more than that.

Yeah. And she brought the love of books to me at a very young age. And I thought, you know what? I need to do something here, something to engage her. And so I said, Mom, I would like to write a book. You know, will you do this with me? She laughed like she always did. And she said, of course, of course I will.

Yeah. So when we spent time in the hospitals, that's what we would do. I would say, okay, I'm thinking about these characters. What do you think? And she would say, yes, no. And okay, I'm thinking about angels because I wanted to keep it light. I did not know the book would go in the direction that it went until years later, when I visited it and had lost my mom.

And then it kind of took a very different turn. but it helped me with, you know, the characters, their names, the angels, and the premise of the book. Ah. So when you're writing the book where you're doing it to just kind of pass the time with your mom, make it easy in being in the hospital and all that stuff, and not really an intention to publish, or maybe was there kind of like maybe? Yeah, there was a maybe. I thought it would be really cool to write something with my mom. She had always encouraged me to write, and she had always encouraged my creativity and, you know, the crazy side of me.

We had a lot of patience with that, as did my dad, but I thought it would be really cool to publish something, you know, with her. I didn't get there with her, but in a sense I did. Yeah, it was always in the back of my head to have it published. What an awesome story. You know, I remember my father called me from the hospital one time, and I could hear a lot of fear. his voice. And so I started telling him stupid jokes, you know, just anything I can come up with. And, you know, is your nurse cute? What's the food like? You know, the standard hospital jokes, I think, maybe I don't know. And I mean, you just got to reach for what material you can at the time.

So I just started telling him stupid limericks and jokes and whatever and playing on hospital stuff. And within a few minutes, I mean, you really had the fear in his voice that things were going bad. And they were. But I got a little. him to laugh. I got him, you know, I told him funny stories. One time this nurse. And, and he's, and eventually had him laughing. And all that fear dissipated from his voice. And so what a beautiful thing to share with someone in the hospital is to, you know, helps our stories or build stories or, you know, focus on the future. Yeah. And that was a beautiful thing that, you know, you made your dad laugh because that's what it's all about. And growing up, that's what they did for us,

right? Yeah, they did. You know, so you try to do that for them without the role reversal. Yeah. Plus it gets your mind off of what's going on. When you're, you know, as I was, I did a hernia surgery recently and being in a hospital, you know, plug full of wires and stuff. That's not a, you know, anything you need to get your mind off that. Yeah. Yeah. The book of attorney, now you've got this mapped out for a future series in the book. How big do you see this series? Is there, is there a cap to this? Some, I mean, some authors will put a, cap to a certain number of books. What was your feeling about this and what you plan to do? My feeling is three. So a trilogy. Two more, you know, after this. When I finished this book, I thought the way I ended it, which I had no idea how I was

going to end it really, I said, okay, there needs to be a second. And just thinking about it, I feel that it can go three books. And then I'll stop it at that. Ah, is it possible you may go beyond? I don't think so. But I think I will write another series after this. Now, you've worked in the age of TV and film. Do you maybe see you could report this to a screenplay?

I do. But I'm thinking more maybe TV. It's TV so hot right now. And there's so many opportunities and it's young adult and that's a really hot area. Yeah, right now. So I'm thinking that more than. been a film, but I would be open for that as well, of course. Sure, yeah.

Like, you're not going to turn down Steven Spielberg, right? Yeah. If you want to produce a movie. Who would do that? Is there anybody who does that? I don't think so. That would be funny. No, I don't think you're quite of the caliber, Stephen Spielberg.

No. I'm holding out for Francis Ford Coppola. I don't know. Both great authors for directors. You know, writing a book, how is that different than some of the other stuff you've been doing with your career and acting and stuff. The screenplays and TV pilots or TV scripts that you get, they are usually like a TV script is anywhere between 45 and 60 pages,

and at least in my experience, and a film script is usually around 120 pages. It's a lot condensed into a very, you know, short, tiny little space where a book is larger. You know, it's a larger scope. When I get a script, I look at it and the descriptions are very brief. You know, it's a walk to the car. It was night kind of thing.

And then the world is brought to life in pre-production, right? The director and the cinematographer and other people. But in writing a book, you need to bring the world to life in the pages. So you need to, you know, be very descriptive. of and have the characters react and act in a certain way so the reader can feel what the characters are feeling or what you would like the reader to feel. So for me, writing the book was definitely more challenging than any screenplay or a TV pilot I've written. Yeah. I mean, you have to fill in the visuals. So the, you know, anytime you got like movies or TV, you know, you've got the music

that can come up and you got the visuals of, you know, the add to the story. that tell it as it passes by. But yeah, you know, that's the biggest challenge with writing fiction is developing the characters, flushing them out,

making sure the reader understands them, and then the development maybe as they go through the story or for multiple books in your case with the series. And yeah, now this is for fans of nostalgic young adult angel fantasy novels. Do I have that right?

Yes, do. Why is, is that an exciting genre? Is that a big genre, the angel fantasy novels? I believe it is. I've had a lot of feedback on that, and I've had some people say, you know, like eight or ten years ago, there were series out that were about angels. I'll miss that, and I'm glad that this is back, so I can, you know, read about.

So I'm fortunate in that, in that way. Yeah. Romance loves, they love those vampire books, but I think this is the first time we've had someone in the show who's got a book for paranormal romance. I don't know. I have a huge dating group and I've seen the demands that people are putting out each other for dating and courts companionship nowadays. And I don't know. And paranormal might be,

they might have a better chance of finding someone in the paranormal to date with the list of demands. I don't know. Yeah. The whole dating world's a little tricky. It's a funky. It's a funky place to be. Right now the kids are going, what does funky mean? Did he grow up in the 70s?

He did. And the Copper Moon series is what it's going to be called in the series. Is that correct? Yes, the Copper Moon series. The Copper Moon. I like that. There's an imagery there of the Copper Moon that I think I like. In fact, I think we just had a Copper Moon, didn't we?

We did. I think it was last number. Yeah. Look copperish. I'll just call it that. Yeah. But now, what made you want to pick a 16-year-old girl for this? Was that, do your characters, it's not only,

have to develop your characters. Do you have some that stalk you and they bug you until you're right about them? Um, sometimes they do, but for this, I wanted it to be young adults. So I just kind of went with like the 16 year old or used to teach acting. I used to run a theater group. I had a lot of high school and college age students and I saw what they went through and I saw what they worried about. And I remembered thinking, this is crazy. Why are you worrying about? that. It means nothing. And then, because they were so smart.

And you just knew they were going to do wonderful things, which they went on to do incredible things. But it brought me back to when I was there. And I remembered the things I used to worry about that were not important at all. And, you know, looking back and they have no effect on your life as you get older, I wanted to sort of explore that age again. So that was, you know, why I went back to that age. And I also had a couple of students who had lost a parent.

And in light of what I was sort of going through at the time when I started writing this in the very beginning, what I didn't realize was I was looking at my students who had lost their parents and one parent and what they had gone through. And I was fortunate enough not to lose my parents at a very young age, but they still feel the same things that we do, maybe just on a different level, but then having to navigate high school and college without both parents, without having to be one. So I just kind of wanted to explore that theme because I had seen some of my students go through that. Yeah. Were you a fan of this genre before?

Did you read a lot of books? Was there any authors that influenced you from the genre? I honestly did not, but I'm a big editor-I-on-po fan. So I was aware of different books out there, like The Twilight series, right? And then the Dutch series, things like that. And I watched a couple of shows that were young adult. And I actually had some scripts brought to me when I was acting that were young adult and read those. And just kind of garnered enough to understand what the genre was about.

And then also having the students that I had, they would bring in books and they would talk about them with me. And I learned a lot that way as well. Oh, wow. You know, I, this is the first, you know, we have hundreds of, of the romance novels on the show. And this is the first time I've heard of this particular genre. So there's lots of, it's, it's kind of interesting. Do you think it's a quick read, like a beach read? I know a lot of the ladies like those beach read books.

It can be. I've gotten feedback where somebody has. said, oh, you know, easy, great read. I did it in a day and a half. And yeah, I had somebody else two days. And then, you know, there are other people who it takes them a week or two weeks to read it. I didn't want to write a 500-page novel because I figured there would be, you know, a lot of people out there who maybe don't have the time to sit down and read that much,

especially within this genre of young adult. I had some people tell me you should make it longer, you should make it longer, but I'm glad that I didn't make it longer and I kept it at this length. Yeah. A lot of the publishers now, they've just gone smaller and smaller and thinner and thinner. Because people just have a shorter attention span. They got that phone pinging them and stuff. Why do you think reading books is important as opposed to, I guess, doom scrolling on social media?

Oh, yeah. I'm not a big fan of social media. I honestly wouldn't be on it if I didn't have to promote myself. For me, books just holding a book in your hand and opening it and having yourself transported to another world. Or even if it's nonfiction, you're learning. And it's the book to your brain. It's not, I'm scrolling and I'm not really remembering what I'm doing. and I just love

holding a book in my hand being transported anywhere you know I think that's so much more important than social media yeah and I mean you can get you can get lost down some wormholes I've been known to get on TikTok and I'm just like

oh I'll just watch a few TikToks swipe through them before I go to sleep and then I'll and then I'll be swiping through and then I'll look up and I'm like why is it like coming through the window exactly you went down the rabbit hole Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

You're just like, I can't sleep, I guess. I'll just look at the screen one more time and look through a couple. Maybe I'll put me asleep. Man, that blue light keeps your old brain awake. It goes, blast your brain. You're just like, and then you're just like, oh, I'm going to be screwed today because I need to sleep. Yeah, books are great. You know, I was just talking earlier today on a prior show about how important books were in reading and the development of the mind.

you know, we're talking about the tactileness of how I really enjoy newspaper, reading newspapers, and the old newspapers where you held them in your hand, it was made a paper, and, you know, you get black ink all over yourself by the time you get done. But there's something about it that I really like. The same thing of the book, there's something tactile and making notes and writing in it, and having to build that vision that the author is signaling to you, you know, the vision of the scenario in your head. head. And so there's a lot of work that has to be done there. You know, when you watch these videos that are on YouTube, you know, it's pretty much the, the, everything's designed for you.

It's pretty much, you know, kind of a lazy brain sort of way of doing it. So when you read a book, you've got a, you know, you've got to build that imagination the author feed you in your head and see the pictures and, you know, everything comes alive. And I think that's a whole kind of a, It's a very personal experience. If you ever read a book and then you see a movie on the book, sometimes you go, that's not how I imagine that dude or that woman day in the book. You know, I read the book. It was I painted my own kind of version.

It's kind of like lyrics to songs. You know, people take lyrics and, you know, they'll apply their own sort of whatever filter of their life onto it. You know, for years and years and years, I thought the Stairway to Heaven was a song about me and, I don't know, an acid trip I went on as a kid or something. I don't know. I'm just making it yourself. But it wasn't. And I was very disappointed. I'm suing Led Zeppelin to this day.

Did your roles in acting, reading scripts and being in this field really help you in writing out the book? I would imagine so. What were some ways maybe that helped? It definitely did. It helped me in character development. I was fortunate enough to receive scripts from a pretty incredible writer. I had access to these writers and they were very kind to me. So reading those scripts, again, character development, story development, you know, the plots, the beats, all of that, and a lot of aha moments when I'm reading, like, oh, I see, you know, this character said this here because it had something to do, you know, like 20 pages later had to do with that.

And there's a lot of that and through lines. So when I sat to write this, all of that stuck with me. And I made sure to, you know, apply that. And also what's for me really important as a writer as well as an actor is characters need to do something. They need to be there for a reason. And what I do when I write is after I'm finished and, you know, you're on like your fifth or six or 20th draft. Stand behind the character and I read the book and I just take that journey with the character.

And I ask myself, is this character interesting? Would I want to play this character? Would someone else want to play this character if it's male? And how can I make it more interesting? A certain tick I could give this character. There needs to be a reason for him to be here or her. And that has helped me a lot. And also talk to, you know, writers who I admire about this.

and they have also just helped me develop in writing characters that way as well as stories. Developing characters. I mean, it's interesting how stories, we love stories. They entertain us. They shape our world. They teach us. As I always like to say in the show, stories are the fabric. Stories are the fabric of life.

Without them, who would we be? You know, I mean, if you took away all your stories, you wouldn't know who you were, right? even the good, bad, and ugly ones. You need those. You need the good, bad, and the ugly, because they sort of form who you are, you know, as well as the good ones. Yeah. I mean, I kind of, sometimes you're like,

I wish that had happened to me in life, but then you can look back over life and go, it shaped me in some interesting ways. You know, the things, ways you learn to survive. It's kind of, what, it's kind of a thing for it there. Do you see this as a burgeon career for you? Do you maybe see you quitting, doing other things? Are you going to balance it out and try and do everything?

I would just like to write. I think I would just like to write. My life is somewhere very different now. I have obligations that I did have in the past. And writing allows me to be in a place where I can take care of my obligations, which I love to do and have time to spend with the people I love and care about, still get to be creative. Wow. I got out on my obligations by faking my death. I think yours is probably better than the one I did, but I don't know. The kids weren't that great. They started being teenagers and I was like, I'm out of here. No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that. Don't do that. This has been wonderful to have you. Anything more we want to plug or promote on the book? Do you have names for the new books

you want to tease out or you don't want to give them away yet, maybe? I don't want to give me away yet, but I appreciate it. And I have a couple of things in the works for the future, but I just don't want to say them yet, just in case they don't pan out. But grateful to be here. And thank you for having me on your show. It was really wonderful.

Thank you, Jacqueline. We certainly appreciate it. Give us your dot-coms as we go out, wherever social means, wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. Sure. I can go to jacquelinepanwit.com, which is my website.

You can also go to Jack Will author, Jacqueline Pennewell for Facebook and on Instagram, Jack Will & Penel author. Thank you very much for coming to show. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for book, folks. Wherever fine books are sold, you can find it there on the marketplace.

The Book of Eternity, part of the Copper Moon series. You can pick it up wherever fine books are sold. And, of course, be the first one on your block to read it and get ready for those new books. coming out. Thanks for me for us for us for us for us for us for us for us for us for Chris Foss. It's Chris Foss everywhere. It's the original Chris Foss. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next. You've been listening to the most amazing intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning. Consuming too much of the Chris Walshow podcast can lead to people thinking you're

smarter, younger and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated Pounce. Consult the doctor for any resulting brain bleed.