Interview Jeannine D. Van Eperen
by
Mary Paine
1) What are your publishing credits (include books, dates, publisher)?
Albuquerque and The French Physician, from Alpha Ltd in 1981. Hearts in ¾ Time in 2002; Love and All That Jazz in 2003, from Port Town Publishing. Golden-Rod and Trail to Bliss from Awe-Struck Publishing in 2004 and 2005. Memory and Desire, According to the Rules, Childlren of St. Yves, Lila’s Protégé, Before the Star Fades, Daughter of Spain, Heir to the Good Times, No Escape from Love, A Matter of Blood--all from Wings ePress 2004 through 2008. And Highway to Love, Interlude and Willow Spring from Whiskey Creek Press 2006 and 2007.
2) What is your website?
3) Please provide a short blurb for your most recent/upcoming book.
When Lydia Murley can’t sleep and leaves her Chicago hotel room in search of an aspirin, she finds instead a young man bleeding to death in an elevator.
4) Tell us a bit about your writing, including credits, the genre in which you write, etc.
I don’t stick with one genre. I write general fiction (historical, western, contemporary stories) and romance (contemporary, historical and paranormal). Many of my stories are G-rated, but some are also rather spicy PG-17. I received the FAR-award for 2005: Best from Wings for Memory and Desire, a general mainstream fiction. Daughter of Spain, a historical romance, received the Roberta Clementi award. Thus far I believe I have eighteen published books and several short stories. My Gunfight at Whiskey Gulch, a western, is an Amazon Short. My latest A Matter of Blood is my first mystery.
5) Have you always been a writer? Do you have or have you had another career? If so, how did you make the transition/how do you keep your careers separate?
At present I just write. I have been Director of Publicity for a university, a motel manager, and I also worked in the banking and insurance industries. I think I got more writing done when I worked full-time. I recall in my past coming home from work and writing at the dining room table while my son and his friends set up their band and rehearsed rock and roll songs. I am able to focus and used to work at the computer writing while next to me the television showed whatever my husband had decided to watch. Now, I have my own office and find I’m often playing computer games when I ought to be writing. I never had a problem working and finding time to write after work. When one loves doing something, that person (me) finds the time.
6) How did you get your “big break”?
I’m still waiting for it (LOL).
7) Was there ever a time when you felt like quitting and seriously considered it? If so, how did you overcome it?
Many times. Rejections are quite disheartening, but I have a supportive family and my sister always told me, “Keep writing, it’s better than stealing hubcaps.” After I completed my first book, I found that I couldn’t quit, no matter how much I may have wanted to do so. The stories kept coming and I had to get them down. I had to write whether I got published or not.
8) Why do you write in your particular sub-genre?
As I noted before, I don’t write in just one genre. I think I’m a dilettante at heart and like to just leap from one thing to another because it all interests me, but I hope I’m not superficial about my writing. The paranormal I wrote, for instance, I had no idea I had written one until someone told me that is what it is. I just write.
9) What's your writing schedule like?
I don’t have a schedule. Some days I don’t write at all and others, I’m at my computer all day. It just depends. Writer Nan Ryan once said, “Don’t just write, write, write. Take time out to enjoy life, to garden or paint or just go shopping.” Or words to that effect.
10) What are you working on right now?
I just finished a contemporary romance that I have yet to submit, and I’m working on two others, a general fiction and another romance, both contemporary. I also have another that I work on from time to time that goes from the 1800s to near present.
11) What are the biggest challenges for you as a romance author?
It seems to me that a lot of people want to read erotica, and I don’t think I can write that. I believe in leaving some things to the readers’ imaginations. My Lila’s Protégé, Memory and Desire, According to the Rules and Golden-Rod are about as sexy as I can get. I’m pretty much a G and PG rated author.
12) What are your biggest rewards?
Having someone tell me they have enjoyed my work. Writing isn’t for the money. Few authors get rich writing. It is about the satisfaction of completing a story, and as I said, it is always nice to hear a reader say, “I truly enjoyed your book.”
13. How do you start a new story? Where do ideas come from, do you plot everything out, do you write more around characters than plots?
I rarely know where a story comes from. In most cases the plot just starts to float around in a head for a while before I start writing. With The Children of St. Yves I was riding passenger in our car, my husband driving, when all of a sudden this little French girl popped into my brain and told me she had a story to tell, so I brought out my yellow legal pad that I almost always have with me and began writing.
I don’t plot first, and that’s strange, because some people have told me that I sure know how to plot. If I do, I must do it subconsciously. I guess in answer to your question the characters must come first, but I truly don’t know.
14) What one thing do you wish you had known at the beginning of your writing career?
That I was going to write so many stories. Also, it is just about as hard to become a well-known writer as it is to be a movie star.
15) What is one piece of advice you’d offer a new writer?
Keep writing. Finish the story and then go back and edit. I’ll add one piece of advice that Tony Hillerman gave me. “Don’t pay anyone to read your work.”