Interview Jayme Evans

by

John Paulits

1) First, tell us a little about yourself.

I now live alone with my three little Chihuahuas and a cat that think they are human. I have two grown sons, four granddaughters and one grandson. Except for the few attempts at writing while growing up, I have been writing since 1992 when my oldest son flew the nest to college. I took the Beginning and Advanced Writer's digest Novel Writing Workshops and then grammar because I couldn't write nothin' without my Kentucky accent popping up.

2) Now, tell us something about your new book.

My new book, To Wish For Adventure, is Book Seven of my To Wish futuristic/sci-fi romance series, which takes place in a completely fictional world, other than a couple of times touching base on Earth for unexpected alien visitations. Of course, no one on Earth knows of these. To Wish For Adventure picks up with one of the empire's princesses and sister to the crown prince from Book One and takes her to another unexplored galaxy, where she finds a remnant of a family that was thought to have been killed out in the last war in the empire. The Family Vaker has not gone away as the end of Book One suggests, but are they as evil as their Euphratorian counterparts? Princess Elkava will find out in a very unexpected way.

3) What daily routine do you employ to get your writing done?

Routine? What's that? I never have a routine. I write when the urge hits me. I may not write for months and then I write for hours and hours for weeks. When the story gets going, I have to get it in the computer and out of my head or it is gone. It took me twenty-three days to get the first draft of Adventure done. I was even dreaming about this one. That's not normal for me.

4) Where did the idea for this story originate?

That is a really good question. Since it is entirely fiction, I have no idea what lurks in the corners of my weird mind. I just start writing and the worlds and the characters just come together. When I start a book, I never know how it is going to end, because one idea leads to another and then another and then... Well, you get the idea. I think that is called character driven rather than plot driven.

5) What made you decide to become a writer?

Love of reading, I suppose. I dabbled in writing when I was in middle and highschool. I was terrible! I know that now. No wonder my friends didn't want me to read them my long stories. Wanting something to occupy my time after the empty nest of one child gone from home was another reason for writing. I would read, and my own imagination would jump start with the what-if questions that face most authors. Then I'd sit at the computer and try to put the story together, many times putting the book that I was reading down and beginning my own adventure. It took training from the Writers Digest Novel Writing Workshop to help put the words together in an order that made sense.

6) Do you know what you are going to write each day before you sit down to write it, or do you sit down and see what comes?

That's pretty much answered already, but I never know what I'm going to write. Sometimes, I'll start with my hero and start writing, but sometimes my heroine takes top priority. It's who is in my head at the time. Regretfully, with my 'brand' of writing, I have many unfinished stories, because I never could get past the opening scene. I don't really call it writer's block, because I can write, but just not anymore on the beginning scene that I started and didn't know where to go forward.

7) What other books have you written and where can we find them?

I have twelve previous books. I have a historical time travel, a romantic suspense, four vampire romances in my Eternity series and six before this in my To Wish series. You can check them out on my web site at www.jaymeevans.com or on the Wings site. My historical time travel explores the days of pirates at the time of the War of 1812 and Jean Lafitte's contribution to the war. The non-Gothic vampire series explores modern day vampires who have extensive historical back stories that define who they are and what made them as they are today. My To Wish series is totally imaginative with spaceships and space explorers, aliens with 'gifts' of telepathy, telekinesis and empathic abilities, feline shape-shifters and lizard creatures.

8) Do you have any new books planned?

Always. I have at least three more vampire books on the very back burner, a werewolf book that I'm trying to figure out where to go with, and the next in the To Wish series which I think will be called To Wish For Wings because it has a birdman or winged hero who lives on the same planet as my feline shapeshifters. If I get going on this idea, then it picks up one of the new females from the Family Vaker from To Wish For Adventure and takes her exploring on the planet Elfax, which was introduced in book two.