1–What is the title of your latest release?
2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
N/A
3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I’m currently writing in the Sunrise Cove series (all standalones, I swear!), set at Lake Tahoe. Which happens to be where I live. Gorgeous lake. Stunning mountain. Skiing, boating … it was a no brainer.
4–Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Yes! Alice is incredible. She’s fiercely loyal, tough as nails but with a soft, shy heart, AND she can build stuff and fix her own car. She’d be a great BFF. If you can get past her walls, that is. The woman does have a fortress around her heart…
5–What are three words that describe your hero?
Smart, funny, sexy!
6–What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That I can indeed eat a whole box of cookies while stressing over a first draft.
7–Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I race through a first draft, then add in the heart and soul, the sexy, the funny, all in subsequent drafts. Everyone has their own way of writing, and can take no one’s path but your own. Trust me, I’ve tried.
8–What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
COOKIES.
9–Describe your writing space/office!
I don’t have an office or even a desk. I’m ADHD (unmedicated) and so I like to migrate with my laptop. I love to write outside, which I consider my office…
10–Who is an author you admire?
All of them. This is a really hard job, but not one I’d trade for anything.
11–Is there a book that changed your life?
N/A
12–Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)
Everyone has a “How I Started My Career” story. Which is different from their “My First Job” story. Cuz my first job? Well, let’s just say I had two first jobs. One was working for a vet, which sounds great and right up my alley. Dogs! Kitties! Um, yes there were dogs and kitties. But take a wild guess at who scooped up all the poo. ALL of it. My second first job was at the senior folks’ home, and no I didn’t scoop poo, thankfully. But I did serve meals. And I still have a bruise on my butt from the old guys, who, by the way, had quick hands for senior citizens. But I digress…
My “How I Started My Career” story is a little different. I’d moved on from poo and handsy old men to accounting. It was hurting my brain somewhat, so when I got laid off for being the low man on the totem pole, I wasn’t all that devastated. Well, okay, I was, but mostly because the mortgage was coming due.
This was just over fifteen years ago, during a time I fondly refer to as The Deep, Dark Years of Hell. Alpha Man and I had three kids under the age of five (don’t worry, we finally figured out what caused that problem), I’d just lost the accounting job, and he had officially burnt out on his job driving an ambulance on the mean streets of downtown Los Angeles.
It was not a great time for me to begin a new career. So of course that’s what I did.
I had no idea what I was doing; it was sheer reader instinct back then. In between diapers and bottles and baby naps (God bless the nap!), I wrote what I thought was a suspense. When I finished, I bought the Literary Guide to Publishers and started sending out chapters.
I was writing my second book when I got a call. The woman identified herself as an editor from Bantam. She wanted to buy my book if I would just add some sex so she could call it a romance…
I about passed out.
I was standing in the kitchen with a baby in one arm and a kindergartener playing house with the Tupperware all over the floor. I was trying to shush them so I could hear, but all I heard was my middle daughter, a toddler at the time, yelling from the other room, “Mom, WIPE ME!”
Which was when I accidentally hung up on the editor.
With his uncanny male sense of timing, Alpha Man walked in the door at that very moment. I shoved babies at him, saying, “I sold a book, I sold a book!”
“Cool,” he said. “To who?”
Which was when I realized I had no idea. Thank God she eventually called me back (brave of her). I’ve been writing ever since, and I hardly ever hang up on editors anymore.
13–What’s your favorite genre to read?
Romance!
14–What’s your favorite movie?
Oh so many! All the romcoms. ALL OF THEM.
15–What is your favorite season?
Fall, cuz it’s not hot like summer and not cold like winter and not finicky like spring.
16–How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I try very hard not to celebrate my birthdays anymore, but alas my family feels differently. This year it involved a LOT of candles on a cake.
17–What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
We just watched Jack Ryan, The Recruit, and The Old Man, and omg all of them SO GOOD!
18–What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Carbs, please.
19–What do you do when you have free time?
As little as possible.
20–What can readers expect from you next?
I’m so excited about THE SWEETHEART LIST, coming this June!! A woman who decides to go back to the last place that brought her joy … where she finds a life she could never have imagined.
THE BACKUP PLAN by Jill Shalvis
Sunrise Cove Series #3
New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis returns to Sunrise Cove with a heartwarming tale of three people who are bought together when they’re bequeathed an old Wild West inn that has the potential to pull their lives apart, but instead turns into the gift of a lifetime.
When Alice receives a call about an unexpected windfall, she’s stunned to learn the gift is a falling-apart-at-the-seams old Wild West B&B she once considered home—and she’s inherited it along with two strangers. Except they weren’t always strangers. Once upon a time, they were friends. One is her ex-BFF Lauren. The other is Knox, the only guy to ever break her heart, all while never even knowing she existed.
It turns out their lives are unknowingly entangled because they once separately helped the same woman without expecting anything in return. Years later, Alice, Lauren, and Knox are broken in their own way, with their own history—and secrets— causing them to start out on the wrong foot with each other. But according to the will, they must renovate and be partners in the inn for one year or else lose their inheritance.
Stuck together, they make a list of rules to keep the peace—rules that end up doing the opposite, but by some miracle they find what they didn’t even know they were looking for—acceptance, true friendship, and in a case (or two!), true love.
Women’s Fiction Contemporary [Avon, On Sale: January 17, 2023, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780063095472 / eISBN: 9780063095496]
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About Jill Shalvis
New York Times Best Selling Author
Multiple New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jill Shalvis lives in a small town in the Sierras full of quirky characters. Any resemblance to the quirky characters in her books is … mostly coincidental. Look for Jill’s bestselling, award-winning heartwarming and full of humor novels wherever books are sold and visit her website for a complete book list and daily blog detailing her city-girl-living-in-the-mountains adventures.
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