Author Interview with EJourney
I’m interviewing EJourney today, the author of contemporary romance novel “Hello! A Modern Love Story”. Thanks for answering my questions!
Author Interview
1) When did you know you wanted to become an author?
In my teens, I wrote short stories and essays and I had teachers who said they were good. When I was chosen to be editor-in-chief of the high school paper, I planned to become a journalist. But that never happened.
2) Where did you get the inspiration for Hello! A Modern Love Story?
Hello! A modern love story is my homage to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. These writers created heroines with verve and vitality so when I decided to write romance with a feminist/women’s fiction slant, I used themes and, maybe, similar scenes from their works. For instance, in those 19th century novels, the main protagonists often met, talked, flirted, and found themselves falling in love at a dinner or at a ball. The hero and heroine of Hello! also get to know each other at dinner parties. There is the trope of the rich hero clashing with not-rich heroine, as well.
But my novel is a contemporary romance, so it deals with issues modern lovers face like love vs. career choices, abortion, and relationships with others.
3) How long did it take you to write Hello! A Modern Love Story from start to finish?
Six months, give or take a month. But the story actually took shape in my head for at least a couple of months before that.
4) What is your editing process like?
I compulsively tinker with my writing and do umpteen drafts. I wrote a lot in college, did theses, and social science research and evaluation reports. I’ve also edited reports of people who have worked for or with me in previous jobs. So, I do much of my own editing, at least until the final copy. My husband, who once taught English grammar, philosophy, and psychology does a final edit and proofread. I often think he won’t find anything to fix, but he does—a comma here, a missing quotation mark there, or a word that doesn’t quite fit or is vague.
I also find beta readers very useful and I have changed scenes, dialogues, and sequencing based on their comments. To me, that’s part of the editing process, to see how potential readers find the story.
5) What was the most challenging part about writing Hello! A Modern Love Story?
That has to be preserving the hero and heroine’s viewpoints. I find myself lapsing into the all-knowing narrator who knows exactly what’s going on in the characters’ minds. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, Austen and Gaskell wrote as omniscient story-tellers. But limited POV seems the current practice and it may help today’s readers connect with the story more personally.
6) What are your writing goals for 2013?
There are already seeds of a prequel in Hello! So, I’m ready to embark on that. But I won’t finish it in 2013.
7) Are you working on something right now? If so, can you tell us more about it?
I’m in the “imagining” stage for the prequel about Elise’s mother and another novel with an Asian heroine.
I do have blogs I need to do posts for about every two weeks. One, in particular, gives me an outlet for essays I enjoy writing on art, travel, food, and state of being. If you’re curious, that blog is www.eveonalimb.com. This blog is my “reality” and the novels my escape into an imagined world. I also have a long essay on art that I’m working to turn into a short book.
Hello! A Modern Love Story
Title: Hello! A Modern Love Story
Author: EJourney
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Heartache and the specter of revenge follow when sparring partners spend the night together two days before he weds someone else.
A deliciously romantic romp with a good dose of realism and a twist of mystery.
A clash of wits, more than of wills, drives the love story in this modern-day pastiche of 19th-century romance novels by Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South) and Jane Austen. The main protagonists deal with messy feelings and events that could happen to any of us: The heroine, a bright young lawyer, confronts choices about career, abortion, and reactions of parents, friends, and men; while he, an alpha male, is haunted by past relationships, but with a sensitive, caring side that emerges as he woos the heroine.
Author Bio
EJourney is a flaneuse (an observer/wanderer) who writes about, and illustrates (oils, pastels, digital) what she sees and loves. In a past life, with a now-dormant Ph.D., (University of Illinois), she researched, evaluated and developed mental health programs.
Writing was her first love and she wanted to be a journalist but her parents balked at that. She was 15, malleable, and dependent on them for support, so she went into the social sciences, actually a compromise and preferable to chemistry, her parents’ choice.
EJourney’s first novel, Margaret of the North, is illustrated with digital “paintings” done on an iPad.
Her book website is: www.margaretofthenorth.wordpress.com for articles on books and writing, some reviews, and interviews.
For her take on art, travel (mostly Paris where she has stayed for months), eating, and state of being as well as some of her paintings, her website is Journey on a Limb at http://eveonalimb.com .
Links
book website: http://margaretofthenorth.wordpress.com/
twitter:@eholychair