Can you believe it? It has been a YEAR since Jules and I kicked off our blog!! What better way to celebrate than with the author that started it all...New York Times Best Selling Author JAMIE MCGUIRE!!!
Jamie McGuire is the author of the Providence trilogy and of the New York Times best seller Beautiful Disaster. She lives in OK with her "real life cowboy", her children, four horses, four dogs, and a cat. As her bio page says, "when she's not writing, Jamie spends her time letting her four dogs in and out." She recently took time out of her busy life to answer a few questions for us. We truly feel blessed and THANK her for her time. It just shows that she's more than an author, but also an amazing lady!!
ENJOY!!
Just a little something to break the ice…Quickly name your favorite food, the one thing you can’t live without,
and a place you are longing to visit. It's a tie between Sushi and my husband's grilled steak. My kids. Italy.
I saw the pictures on Facebook with you
surrounded by envelopes looking beautiful in your pregnancy and I wonder… How are you feeling right now? Overwhelmed. Blessed. Large.
How do you do it? Meaning, mom, wife, author…How do you find balance? Any
trade secrets? Fall in love with someone that doesn't mind laundry, housework, or cooking while you're obsessing about fictional characters. If
not for my amazing husband, I couldn't do it all. He takes on a lot,
all so I can continue writing. That said, I have realized this summer
why I don't write during the summers. With the children home, writing is
difficult, and my cowboy is at his real job 8 hours a day. For eight
hours, I hear 'mommy' at least 100 times, requests to look at whatever
is on the television, requests for drinks, sandwiches, crackers, a toy
off the top shelf, to look at drawings ... I just find time. When I
can't, I make time. Right now, getting up early and staying up late builds my word count more quickly than writing during regular daytime hours.
If there was one thing about reading
that you could pass onto your children, what would it be? I was never a big reader in childhood(gasp! choke!). I know. I'm
ashamed. Fortunately, my children are the opposite. They are voracious
readers, especially my 12 year old. It wasn't until my adult years that I
learned reading gave you the ability to live hundreds of different
lives. I don't know who passed it on to my children, but I'm grateful.
What was the last book you read? Easy by Tammara Webber
Out of
all the books you have read…Do you have
a favorite book/series you are drawn to read over and over? My Twilight set has been loved to death. That story never gets old.
I read somewhere that Beautiful
Disaster was written for fun…How did that come about? After
reading Providence, my friends asked for something a little more
"steamier". I had grown tired of editing Providence, so I began a book
called Red Flag that was later titled Beautiful Disaster. I
modeled it after some of my own college experiences and added quite a
bit of fictional flair, but never intended to publish. Obviously, I'm
glad I did, but I had no idea the overwhelming response Beautiful Disaster would receive.
Did you ever imagine NY Best Sellers
List and Movie Deals would come out of this book? Not
at all. Like I said before, I didn't intend to publish BD, and only did
so because I was struggling to release Requiem and thought I'd give my
readers something to read while waiting. I read it over and over, and it
still gave me butterflies, so I thought, "What the hell?" Someone might like it. A year later, here we are.
And is it more satisfying doing it all self
published? I think so, however, Simon
& Schuster/Atria has been incredible to me, and it's amazing to
watch them take Beautiful Disaster to the next level. I wasn't sure
what to expect, having been self-published from the start. I am
confident I made the right decision with the right book and the right
publisher. Knowing I've built a certain amount of success on my own,
though ... can't beat that. Would I ever traditionally publish again? With SS/Atria, absolutely. Will I ever self-publish again? Of course.
Now that you are rewriting from
Travis’ POV, is it fun to relive the story?
Anything surprising about Travis that you didn’t expect would come out? Travis's head is both what I expected it to be (unfiltered, fun, volatile), and a little of the unexpected (insecure, insightful, perceptive). It's all been a wild ride, for sure. When I think, "Oh. Damn. Did I cross a line there?" I know I'm doing it right.
In the book, who was your favorite
character to write? Did anyone just pop
up in the story that you hadn’t planned? America
is a lot of fun. She is the female version of Travis in the sense that
she has no fear in saying what she thinks or feels. I like that she's
Abby's voice of reason, and yet at times she's unreasonable. She knows
exactly how far Abby can go, and when to reign her in. America is a
great, horrible best friend, both at exactly the right times.
With all your recent news regarding
BD, some people may forget your other amazing Providence Series. I read it as well and loved it just as much. How did it come about? I
thought it would be fun and interesting to write a story about a
bodyguard falling in love with his client, but I wanted a fresh take. I
read Twilight and thought, "Hell, I can do this." I loved Stephanie
Meyer's easy, conversational-style writing. Paranormal was also
interesting to me, but obviously vampires had been done ... and redone. A
quarter of the way through Providence, it hit me: Angels. I didn't know
at the time everyone else had the same brilliant idea, but even amid
all the angel series out there, Providence has a fresh take. I told my best friend, Beth, about my idea, and she insisted I sit down and write. Eleven weeks later, Providence was
finished.
Both Jared and Travis are protective,
do you find this is something you like in your male characters? Absolutely.
With the Providence Series being
paranormal, it begs me to ask which you prefer to write more? I
like both. I think that's why people are so surprised in how different
Providence is from Beautiful Disaster. I feel very comfortable writing
the slower, sweeter story of Providence, and the in your face, ass
kicking, roller coaster ride that is Beautiful Disaster. The
variety of my upcoming novels are evidence of that, as well. Zombies,
aliens, ghosts, regular humans in extenuating circumstance, finding
themselves, finding love. My writing queue is all over the place—as am
I.
If you could give me your favorite
quote from any of your books, what would it be? "You gotta dance with the devil to get out of Hell." (Eden)
Happy Reading & Thanks for a Great Year!!
~Kiki & Jules
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