First and foremost,
please tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m from the Detroit area, and I'm a
mother of five kids, and I'm a trained singer. I taught voice, dance, and
theater for 15 years, and some of my students have performed on Broadway and in
some of the biggest shows in the country. I just recently retired from teaching
to write full-time.
You tend to write various types of genres. What's your favorite to write and why? What are you most comfortable to write and why? I don't really have a favorite. I think I tend to write various types of romance. To me, no story is complete without romance. So I may cross genres in some capacity, but I don't really worry about genre too much. I focus on telling the best story I can, creating the best characters I can, pulling from the reader the most genuine emotions and reactions. Once the story is done, it usually falls into some category or another, but I don't usually try to fit them there from the beginning.
Are you a plotter or a pantser? Pantser.
What is your writing routine? Um…well? Get up, have breakfast, spend a little time with my kids, then go to my office with my husband and my assistant while my manny takes care of the kids. I do a bit of publishing business work, maybe talk over the current project, and then write.
Where do you find your inspiration? Life, both my own and others. I find inspiration everywhere. I was at the beach with my kids recently and had inspiration for a story hit me, involving the beach and the area where I was. I find it in coffeeshops, from TV, from my friends and former students.
In FALLING INTO YOU, you allow your characters to be broken and hurting. How deep did you go into yourself to write the agony they feel? Everyone has been hurt, has been broken at some point. I know I have. I tap into that and use it. But, unlike an actor, I don't always necessarily feel it myself, I just sort of tap into the emotions I have some familiarity with and then shape them into the story. It's all about chasing the connections. I may not have ever been a horny teenaged boy, obviously, but I remember being a horny teenaged girl, and I have my husband to question, and I can sort of make the connection, use what I know personally and connect it with what I can imagine. But I do I personally feel the wrenching agony my characters in FIY did? No, not really. I'd never be able to live my life if I relived every scene, every emotion. It's hard to explain. The scenes and the emotions flow through me, but aren't mine. I'm expressing the story of fictional characters who started inside me, but they're not me, directly.
In FALLING INTO US, the heroine is Nell's best friend, Becca. I find it interesting that you decided to write a book about a friend trying to help her friend through grief. Where did you get the concept for this book? Well, there was crazy demand for a second Falling book, but I knew I couldn't--and WOUDLN'T--write a direct Nell/Colt sequel. But I also knew I had to give my readers a follow-up, or an epilogue to Nell and Colt's story, so their had to feature in it, without being the focus. FIU is the result of trying to satisfy reader demand while telling a new story with new characters.
How did you research STRIPPED? Hmm. I knew some people in college who stripped to pay for tuition, so I knew a bit about the industry from that. I do a lot of internet research, finding locations, making sure details are right, setting scenes, i.e. LA and USC and all that. After that, it was just telling the story, letting the things I know, sort of intuitively, come out through the writing. I don't do a lot of in-depth research, I don't spend days in the library or do interviews. I may have someone with experience in the subject of my book read it and give me feedback as part of the editing process, though. Like in wounded, I had someone who had fought in Iraq read it and verify that I'd done the subject justice. Some things are a little stretched, or a little unlikely, but no more than in any other book, especially as I never set out to write a war book.
How did you get the idea for a virgin stripper? I love the idea, since it completely breaks stereotypes. That was the idea. I wanted the MC to have a certain tension inherent in who she is. I wanted to go beyond stereotype. It really wasn't that crazy of an idea, though. I knew a girl who was a stripper in college, but she was actually very prudish in her own personal life. She'd only been with, like, one person ever, and was very, very picky about who she dated and how far they'd go. She just happened to be a stripper, too. So the idea sort of came from there, and grew.
What made you want to write a love story where the biggest conflict is WOUNDED? What kind of research went into it? Wounded came from an odd place, honestly. It started as a short story, just what is now the prologue. And then I went and wondered what happened to that girl. And the rest of the story came from there, pursuing those trails of 'what if?' I read some online chats, some forums, researched the economic status of Iraq after the first Gulf War and in between, and leading up the second, how intense things were. That was really it. Like I said a couple questions ago, Wounded is not a war story. I wasn't trying to depict the wars in Iraq, or anything like that. The war was just the setting, part of the backdrop and the conflict. So I didn't' try to do a ton of in depth research. If I had tried to write that kind of book, I'd have had to interview soldiers and read other books on the subject and all sorts of stuff. That's not the kind of writer I am, and that's not the story I like to tell.
What type of relationship is your favorite to explore and develop? My favorite type of relationship? One where the hero and heroine need each other, help each other through some kind of struggle. I love that dynamic, where two people need each other just to get through life, and in the process, discover happiness in each other.
What type of person is your ideal heroine when you're both reading and writing? What type of person is your ideal hero when you're both reading and writing? Are they the same? Why or why not? There is no ideal, there's just people. I'm not writing from the place of hero/heroine, not in the archetypal sense. I just write people, real, raw, flawed, interesting. I like to read books like that too, where the characters feel full and round and real, rather than flat and perfect. It's just what gets me, what inspires me and interests me. I don't believe perfect people exist, and I don't find the idea of such a character interesting.
What has the publishing process been like? A learning curve. It's been fascinating, a lot to take in, a lot to learn. It's been fun, stressful, rewarding, and challenging. I've met some amazing people, who I now consider true friends, and close friends. I've met the opposite kind of people too, and that's just life.
Would you recommend advertisements or did you market your books through a different venue? Ads are tricky. I wouldn't recommend an ad unless you can spare the money for the ad without expecting to make it back, because there's zero guarantee that you will. I market through book bloggers and social media.
How involved are you in terms of editing/book cover/release date/marketing process? I do it all. I hire a cover artist, but I work directly with her to create a cover that matches the book and my vision. I hire an editor, and work in the same capacity. But all the final work and final decisions are mine.
Are you working on anything now? Right now my husband Jack is working on a book called The Missionary, which is almost done, and I’m working out a trilogy to be released through fall and winter. I can't really tell you much right now, since it's still in the planning stages and I'm not sure what would constitute a spoiler or not. What I'll say is that the trilogy will be closer in feel to FIY/FIU, than Stripped. It'll be sexy and romantic and emotional.
Any upcoming releases? No links for you right now, since Jack's not doing a preorder. The first book in the trilogy is set for an October-ish release, so I don't have a link for that yet either, but I *think* there will a preorder on that one, it's just not in place yet.
Twitter: @jasindawilder
Website www.jasindawilder.com
GREAT interview. This picture of you is one of my all time favorites so far ;)
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