An Interview with
Jennifer Lewis
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This month we are talking with Jennifer Lewis, up and coming new author for Silhouette Desire. I’ve read each of her books as they’ve been released and I’ve enjoyed every single one of them. I eagerly look forward to more books by this talented rising star. 1. Congratulations on your newest release, Black Sheep Billionaire, due out this month. Having had the opportunity to read this book in advance, I found it to be full of the passion and romance I’ve come to expect from your novels? Can you tell us a little bit about the story? Thanks Kelley! I’m so glad you enjoyed the story. It’s essentially a reunion romance: Lily Wharton and Declan Gates shared a close secret friendship as kids, but when a stirring kiss opened a new world of dangerous possibilities, she shut him out of her life. Now their hometown of Blackrock, Maine is on the brink of extinction. Lily knows she can bring employment to Blackrock if only she can convince Declan to sell his family’s property to her. But he doesn’t share her vision for the town that treated him like an outcast, or wish to humor the woman who crushed his heart. When he learns Lily took her company public to raise money to buy the property, he decides he’ll have the woman, her company, and the house. He has no idea he’s about to lose his heart. 2. Black Sheep Billionaire struck me immediately as a modern take on Romeo and Juliet without the tragedy. Was that your intention when you began the novel? Or did you have something else in mind until this idea took over? I think I set out to create a bad boy/good girl story, and it naturally evolved into a bad family vs good family dynamic that lent itself to an ongoing feud. Lily’s family are blueblood types who ruled the town—until they lost all their money in the stock market crash of 1929. Declan’s family are the tacky upstarts who rolled into town making money from moonshine liquor and bought the Wharton’s old house for a song. Lily was forbidden to have anything to do with the notorious Gates family, but she and Declan discovered a strong bond anyway—until Lily’s sense of conventionality and fear of her own desires caused her to turn her back on him. I like to take a traditional story that has always ended unhappily, perhaps because the lovers defied social convention, and give them the happy ending I crave. 3. Watching Declan and Lily try to deny their feelings for each other after past hurts, only to give in to their love in the end was so enjoyable to read about. What does it feel like to write characters so bound and determined to resist their obvious attraction? Characters trying to resist their attraction are the most fun to write about! They have all these powerful sensations and emotions rolling through them. They wish they could stop them, but they can’t and that creates exquisite tension and anxiety that I try to convey when I write. 4. What was it that made you one day decide you were going to be a writer? Did you always know or was it a surprise to choose this career path? I’ve always made up stories, but it didn’t even cross my mind to be a writer until I was in my mid twenties. It takes a certain level of confidence—or audacity—to sit down and write something for other people to read. The whole experience of falling in love came as a huge shock to me. I happened to discover category romances around the same time, in a library near where I worked. I think the confluence of falling in love myself and discovering these intense stories made me sit down at a computer and try to write. Now I get to relive that “oh my gosh what’s happing to me?” experience over and over again through my characters J 5. To date all of your novels have been contemporary category romances. Do you see yourself staying in this genre or do you plan to branch out? Maybe trying for single title at some point? Although I started out writing category novels, I actually wrote other types of books too before I sold. I had completed eleven novels by the time I sold number 8 (The Boss’s Demand). Desires are my first love because of the intense focus on the relationship, but I’m sure I’ll write other things again, in time. 6. If you had to think back and pinpoint who it was that inspired you to be a writer, who would you say? Would you say these same people have been most influential on your writing style? If not, then who? I can’t pinpoint one writer, but when I was a child we had several old editions of the Brothers Grimm collections of classic fairy tales around the house. My mother told me they were too frightening for children, so naturally I had to read them! I immediately got hooked. There’s something about the emotional drama of those kinds of stories that grabs your gut and that resonates with every generation. Reading stories inspired me to make up my own stories in my head (a habit I’ve had as long as I can remember!) and over time that grew into the idea of writing stories. I have no idea who influenced my writing style! It’s not something I consciously developed, but just the way my brain works, I guess. 7. This is one of my favorite “signature” questions to ask in an interview. If you had to write a short paragraph about your writing to convince readers to give your books a shot, what would you tell them? I put together a banner ad recently so I felt pressured to come up with a short “blurb” about my books. I wrote down what popped immediately into my mind: “Passion, sensation, emotion. Get lost in a book.” I enjoy setting up conflicts fraught with emotional and sexual tension. The characters fight their attraction tooth and nail, but ultimately can’t resist it. My characters are strong willed and passionate, and my books invite you to escape into their world and live their emotions—happy ending guaranteed! I usually choose interesting and evocative settings so that sensation of escape feels a bit like a vacation, too. 8. You traveled extensively when you were younger and then went to school for a rather different field of study (I never heard the word Semiotics before reading your bio). Do you feel like your experiences and knowledge have come into play with your books you’ve written? How so? Semiotics translates loosely as “the study of signs and systems of meaning” (or at least that’s the description I used on my first job interviews) and it’s part of the English Department at some universities. Learning how to pick apart books and films and TV shows and see what makes them work is a great background for a writer. Settings are very important to me, and I’m sure my travels gave me a sense of the uniqueness of each place. Light, for example, varies hugely from place to place, and often sets the mood in a way that people wouldn’t be aware of at all if they spent their whole life in one spot. I love to go to new cities and countries and absorb the scents and sounds and magic of each place. 9. You have a new series, Park Avenue Scandals, set to begin in the fall. Can you tell us anything about your plans for this series or where the idea came from? This series is a Desire continuity, so the idea was developed by the Silhouette editorial staff. I was chosen to write book three in the series, titled The Prince of Midtown, about a Mediterranean prince who falls madly in love with his personal assistant. My editor told me I was chosen for this book because I can write a hero who is arrogant but still lovable J I had so much fun writing Prince Sebastian of Caspia. Tessa, his assistant finds him eminently adorable and I hope readers will too. 10. You have a penchant for taking classic storylines and reinventing them in your books. I’d even venture so far as to say that is something of a trademark of your writing. If someone were to ask what you felt to be your trademark, what would you say? Perhaps it’s my background immersed in fairy tales, but I’m irresistibly attracted to those old fashioned stories that can be told over and over again because they cut to the core of who we are as humans and the passions and desires that rule our lives. Someone is always falling in love with their boss, or their worst enemy, or their best friend. Every day people accidentally get pregnant, or discover a long lost relative, or re-ignite an ancient rivalry. Each person’s experience is different so there’s always a fresh way to tell a familiar story—and my pulse races at the prospect of doing just that J 11. How much advance plotting goes into your writing process? Do you plan everything out ahead of the time or do you just start writing and see where your characters lead you? I do plot everything out ahead of time, especially now that I sell my books on proposal. I don’t go into great detail though, so although I know what will happen, and in approximately what order, I never know the details of a scene until I start writing it. Often my characters will surprise me! 12. How do you celebrate the completion of a novel? Do you have anything special you do or do you just move right on to the next project? It’s funny, I don’t even type “The End.” I read and revise, and even after I send it out, I know there will be line edits and copy edits so it’s not really finished until it shows up on the shelves. I guess starting a new book is my kind of celebration. 13. If I had to pick which of your books was my favorite, I’d probably have to say Seduced for the Inheritance. I just loved the whole story behind the romance of Naldo and Anna. And we had the added bonus of seeing the second love story of Letty and Robert. How hard was it to blend to separate love stories into one book? The story of Letty and Robert grew organically out of Anna and Naldo’s story. When I started the book all I knew about them was that they’d had a secret affair, and everything else evolved from there as I wrote the book. So I guess my answer is that it wasn’t hard at all! 14. While I know it would probably be extremely difficult to single out one of your own books that you loved best but if you had to pick, which would it be and why? I totally couldn’t! It would be like trying to pick my favorite child. They’re all special to me for different reasons J 15. Thank you for taking the time today to talk to us about your books Jennifer! Do you have anything you’d like to say in closing? Just that I hope 2008 brings wonderful things for all of us. Thanks so much for interviewing me, Kelley! Visit Jennifer's website! Read reviews of Jennifer's books:
Interviewed by Kelley |