Fan2Author Interview: Jenny Brown

Please help me welcome an Author that is quite new to me, Jenny Brown. She writes hot historical romances with a twist-astrology. Her second book in Lords of the Seventh House series, Star Crossed Seduction, the Scorpio book, is out now. After reading it, I wasn’t surprised to find out that her first novel “Lord Lightning” was nominated by RT Book Reviews as one of the “Best Historical Novels 2010” in the “K.I.S.S. Hero” category.  I made sure to go and get that one as well. Jenny, welcome to b2b. Have I told you how much I enjoyed your hero and heroine? I thought you captured their thoughts and actions so well that they seemed so real to me. Tell me more about them, about what goes into ‘giving birth’ to characters of such ‘real and human’ emotion.

JB:  I wish I could say I consciously create the characters I write about, but with all the novels I’ve written, I start with a vibrant image that floats up in my inner eye, where characters are going about his or her business. Then I try to figure out who these people are and why they’re doing what they’re doing. With Star Crossed Seduction I started out visualizing the scene where a crowd has gathered around a flickering bonfire on a shadowy street deep in the London slums. I saw the pickpocket darting through the crowd and noticed she was dressed all in black. I’d already decided the hero should be a soldier who had just returned from India, but once Temperance showed up in all her rebellious glory, it took me a while to figure out why this very odd couple—the dutiful soldier and the rebellious runaway—were perfect for each other.

b2b: Jenny, I know that you must have done a lot of historical as well as astrological research for these books. Tell me more about it, will you?

JB: As is true for most authors, 98% of the research I do for each book doesn’t make it onto the page but I think it does help me create richer characters and settings. For this book I did a great deal of reading about the life of soldiers in the army in India in the very early 1800s—a period which was culturally quite different from the “Raj” period that followed that we are more familiar with. The spymaster who sends Trev, my hero on the little “errand” that gets him into such a pickle was a real person, too.

I also read up on the London underworld. The people Temperance has to contend with—the bawd, Mother Bristwick, and the people who work for her—are based on real people who lived in the Seven Dials area. The streets were filled with kids like those Temperance casts her lot with, and the language they use in the story was drawn from primary sources.

b2b: Which book of the two were the hardest and the easiest to write and which couple did you like the best?

JB: I had more fun writing Lord Lightning, because I wrote it to entertain myself and a few close friends and there was no pressure on me while I was working on it. Star Crossed Seduction was written under contract, so I had a deadline hanging over me, and because my publisher was so excited about Lord Lightning, I had to live up to some very strong expectations. That said, I think Star Crossed Seduction is a better book, with realer characters whose relationship is more emotionally complex, both of which are what I enjoy most in the novels I read. But I can’t tell you which couple I prefer. That’s like asking a mom which of her kids she likes best.

b2b: Do you let someone read your work during your writing process? Who and why? Or do you wait ‘till it’s finished, then you let someone read it…and who?

JB: I was very fortunate to have made friends with another unpublished author, Lisa Brackmann, quite a few years ago. As it worked out, she sold her first novel the same time I sold Lord Lightning, so we both coped with the challenge of writing our second books over the same period. Since Lisa and I had read each other’s works in progress for years, and cheering each other on when no one else was excited about our work, I felt safe showing her my first draft of Star Crossed Seduction, even though I knew it needed a lot more work. She made some very insightful comments that pointed me toward what I needed to do to make the book much stronger. But usually I don’t show my work to anyone until I think it’s very close to submission quality.

b2b: The intimate, explicit scenes in your books, how hard are they to write?

JB: What can I say? The research is fun.

But they really do take research, or you may end up with three armed heroes or physically impossible contortions that take your reader out of the scene. But in a romance, the sex scenes are not really about sex, but about the relationship. So once the mechanics are worked out, it’s important to get deep into the characters’ heads and make sure that what happens in that sex scene could only happen between these two people because of who they are and how they think.

b2b: Cover Art in my humble opinion is really very important, and your covers are beautiful! Do you have any input during this process?

JB: I tell my editor what the physical characteristics of the characters are and give her a one paragraph description of the story, but after that it’s out of my hands. The covers of these first two books were done by a very talented artist, James Griffin. Since the artists don’t read the actual book, it blew me away how closely the characters Griffin depicted matched the way I’d imagined them looking.

b2b: Titles are also very important tell me how do you come up with them and do you have help in doing so?

JB: It’s a back and forth process. I submitted several titles to Avon, but they didn’t like them. Then they came up with several others which I didn’t like, either. Eventually we came up with one we could both agree on. That said, this most recent book was very resistant to having a title at all. All my friends still call it The Scorpio Book, which may be its secret name.

b2b: As a writer, I’m sure you read a lot. What do you read the most and what’s on your TBR now?

JB: Mostly I read nonfiction, especially biography, history, and science. You can see what I read over the last year and what I thought of those books here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4215702

b2b: Jenny, what advice would you give a first-time author thinking of publishing?

JB: If you write fiction, write because you can’t stop yourself from doing it, because you’d be writing even if no one would ever pay you, and most importantly, because you enjoy the actual writing. Chances are even if you sell your novel to a publisher, it won’t make you rich, earn you friends, or make you famous. So make sure that you get enough pleasure out of the actual writing that if it doesn’t attain your external goals, you will still be glad that you put the time into it.

Beyond that, all I can add is this: read, study, write, and do what you can to avoid the besetting sin of newbies, which is to think that every word you put on the page is gold and that anyone who rejects your work is an idiot. Most first novels are mediocre. The authors who end up getting published are those who keep writing—and reading—and get to where they can see what is wrong with their early work so they can improve it. The best authors I know—people who get starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly and the like—are the ones who are the least confident of their skills because they see so much more than they could have done. b2b: Now, that ends up our ‘professional’ portion of this interview. Are you ready to get personal? Or are you going to chicken out on me?

JB: Try me.

b2b:  So, tell us a bit about yourself, something personal that you’d like us to know…anything that makes you comfortable…or not…like how many times did you fall in love? What’s your favorite meal of the day (food)? Flannels or Silk? Do you like to cook? What’s your favorite spot in the house? Cats or Dogs? Champagne or Beer?  Your favorite time of the year? Movies or TV? What’s your favorite TV show or movie?

JB:  I have Venus in Gemini in my Seventh house, so as any astrologer would tell you, I have had more than one great love in my life.  But by now I’ve been happily settled with the current love of my life for long enough that I can’t remember how I could have loved anyone else. As far as the rest of your questions go: Lunch, Flannels. I’m burnt out on cooking after cooking home cooked meals almost every night for my kids for the 20 years they were home. My computer. Cats. Beer. Spring. Neither TV or Movies, I prefer reading to either. My favorite film, if by that you mean the one I have watched most often, is the 1980s BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. I learned how to write fiction by watching that show and then going back to Austen’s work to see how she mapped each scene down on paper.

b2b: Jenny, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for agreeing to do this with me. It’s been so much fun and I wish you oodles of success! I’ve just started to read Lord Lightning and I love it already, so I know without a doubt that your books are always going on my Keeper Shelf!

CONTEST: I’d like to ask those of you reading here to give me your candid opinions on something I’ve been wondering about. Some reviewers, including b2b here, have given Star Crossed Seduction rave reviews and called it a keeper. But others have posted more negative reviews. What kind of review influences you the most? Do negative reviews keep you from checking out a new author?  If more than ten people post comments in reply to this question, I’ll pick one commenter randomly and send them a copy of Lord Lightning.