I have yet to meet Janis Susan May in person but we have become friends through my blog Ladies of Mystery. She is one of the monthly bloggers there and I have read one of her Romantic Adventure books and can tell you she packs action and romance together in a nice read. Here is my interview with her.
Paty: What is the criteria for a story to be a Romantic
Adventure?
Paty: I like that description! It makes sense. Why did you decide
to write a Romantic Adventure?
Paty: I understand being the junior partner. I've had that happen to me a time or two in books. You have books set around the world. How do you decide where a Romantic Adventure will be set?
Janis: Basically, I don’t. Almost every time I have actually traveled to the setting and at least the germ of an idea sprouts while I am there. Sometimes, though, it will lie fallow in the back of my brain until it will spring forth most unexpectedly and demand to be explored. Sometimes the entire story will appear, other times it will be a couple of scenes, sprinkled like breadcrumbs to lure my creative mind into creating a complete plot. Ask any author and most of them will say that every book is different.
Paty: I agree! Every one of my books has come to me in a different way than the last. Do you use the setting to come up with the plot of the books or do you come up with the plot first?
Janis: Yes. As I said, most of my RAs are set in exotic locales I have actually visited, so the setting does definitely influence the story. Every locale has something about it that forms a core part of the story. That said, the construction of every book is different, no matter what genre. Sometimes it comes in tantalizing chunks, sometimes it the entire story just appears and demands to be written, sometimes I have to pull every word out one by painful one... and usually every book is a shifting combination of all three methods. And I can never predict which/what it will be, but somehow it always seems to work.
Paty: Yes, your books are fun to read. How did the idea
for the Egyptian File come to you?
Janis: THE EGYPTIAN FILE is a classic RA, a chase across Egypt to solve a mysterious file left to Melissa Warrender by her late father - the same father she buried three months before and who telephoned her just a few days ago. An unknown number of baddies are determined to steal the file, which Melissa is trying to get translated, but she is helped by a handsome cab driver who talks like an Oxford don... who is he? For that matter, what is he - a baddie or a goodie? Melissa doesn’t know who to trust or even what she is really looking for, but suddenly it seems everyone in Egypt is looking for her. (I got the idea for this touring the famous ‘patio tombs’ in the necropolis at El Kab.)
To get back to the original question (late, I know!) I really don’t know how ideas come to me. They swarm around like midges in late summer, dive-bombing my brain and demanding attention. The hard part is not getting ideas, it’s being able to sort through them and pick ones that will play nicely together. While all books start from one idea, it takes a lot of them to make a book - and they all have to mesh together. Sometimes it makes juggling running chain saws look easy, but when a story comes together and makes a cohesive, readable book it’s worth it.
Paty: This book sounds like a fun read. Do you have a
favorite character in your Romantic Adventure books?
Paty: I'm the same way. Whichever book I'm working on is my favorite because it is a new and exciting story. Who are some of
the authors you read who write this subgenre of romance?
Paty: In high school, I read every Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt book our library had. I loved the adventures those books took me on. Just for fun –
Tell us what is your favorite thing to do besides writing and reading, because
we know that’s a given.
Paty: Wow, Janis, you are a busy woman! I'm surprised you can find time to write your fabulous books. Here is a bit about Janis.
Janis Patterson/Janis Susan May/Janis Susan Patterson/J. S. May/ J. S. M. Patterson is a 7th-generation Texan and a 3rd-generation wordsmith who writes in mystery, romance, childrens, horror and non-fiction/scholarly. (She admits she bores easily!) Once an actress and a singer Janis has also been editor-in-chief of two multi-magazine publishing groups as well as many other things, including an enthusiastic amateur Egyptologist. Janis’ husband even proposed in a moonlit garden near the Pyramids of Giza. Janis and her husband live in Texas with an assortment of rescued furbabies. www.JanisPattersonMysteries.com
Melissa Warrender is trying to solve the strange death of her art-gallery owner father. Her father’s partner in Warrender’s Fine Art, Melissa’s specialty is paintings of the 17th and 18th centuries, while her father primarily dealt in antiquities.
Driven by an unexplained phone call which may or may not have come from her late father, she goes to Cairo to retrieve a mysterious file, not knowing that she is a prime suspect of a special task force set up to stop antiquities smuggling.
David El-Baradi is a professor of Egyptology in London, in Cairo on sabbatical to help the task force. Forced into masquerading as a taxi driver who befriends Melissa, he finds himself attracted to her and, eventually, becomes convinced of her innocence. David cannot reveal his true identity, especially when it starts to seem that the treasure is an undiscovered royal treasure.
As the pair lurch across Egypt, dodging the murderous son of Warrender’s chief rival and unable to call on the task force for help, they finally decipher the cryptic clues and solve the mysteries of THE EGYPTIAN FILE, almost sacrificing their lives to do so.
bUY liNK: https://www.amazon.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment