Hello, everyone. My name is Jessica Barksdale Inclan, and I’m the author of a few novels, the latest BEING WITH HIM, a paranormal romance from Kensington. I am so happy to be here today at Freshfiction.com. I blog daily at www.redrom.com/, but it’s nice to have a new place to meet people. As I was thinking about what to write about to you today, I realized I didn’t want to talk about writing but reading. Writers usually are always readers first. And as that is the case with me, I relate most with being a reader. That’s what I do. That’s what I am. Reading saved me. It has always saved me. From before I could read myself, my mother’s daily and nightly reading to me saved me, kept me from thinking my own thoughts sometimes, giving me new thoughts to think about. Reading put me into worlds I had never been, worlds I wanted to go to. Reading was something I could do when all else failed. In fourth grade, I was tested at 12th grade reading level and a 2nd grade math level. Things have changed relatively little in that regard, the wide disparity still there. But then…

Sadly, I missed the inaugural Thrillerfest, which was held in Phoenix. I had recently given birth to my first child, and the thought of Arizona in July with a newborn was not terribly appealing. Which is a shame, because from what I understand it was one for the ages. I made up for it by attending the past few Thrillerfests in New York, and I’m happy to report that despite the fact that everyone always says, “You shoulda been at the first one,” I’ve had an amazing experience each time. My week kicked off with a joint reading at the Park Avenue Borders. Tim Maleeny, Laura Caldwell, J.T. Ellison, Mario Acevedo, Laura Benedict, Shane Gericke, Alexandra Sokoloff, and I participated in “Quick Thrills from Out-of-Towners.” Lee Child graciously served as our MC, and in completely disregarding our prepared bios introduced us with anecdotes a hundred times wittier than anything we could have come up with. Everyone read for five minutes to an incredibly receptive crowd. The store was quick to add rows of seats as the place filled, we auctioned off Borders gift certificates and stuffed snakes (which were more of a hit than the $100 certificates, go figure). A…

From the time I was a little girl, I was terrified of the house I grew up in because I knew it was haunted—by what I couldn’t say, but a malign energy tainted that house. It didn’t help matters that I’ve always been somewhat psychic. I could always sense whatever was there watching me. To this day, that house shows up in my nightmares and in my nightmares, it’s usually filled with tens of thousands of spiders (I’m arachophobic) and I wake up screaming. Granted, I had a lot of serious baggage to deal with in childhood, but the house stands out in my mind as the ‘haunted house on the hill’ even though it was smack in the middle of a lower-class suburb. Scared of the house or not, that didn’t detour me from falling in love in love with the paranormal, and from becoming a total fantasy/SF freak. When I was five years old, I stumbled over Dark Shadows and went nuts over it. I’m not certain why my mother let me watch a vampire soap opera but wouldn’t let me watch ‘the man with the funny ears’ (Spock, on Star Trek, which started the same year). I…

Research is the strength of all stories, regardless if it is contemporary, historical, fantasy or futuristic. So how does an author create real settings in all of these worlds? I like to walk the land every time I can to pick up details we don’t see in a casual passing or on the internet. When Sherrilyn Kenyon and I were writing our new romantic-suspense story PHANTOM IN THE NIGHT (Pocket/June 10, 2008) last fall, we spent time in New Orleans (NO) surveying areas specifically for the story in spite of our joint knowledge of Louisiana. Sherrilyn knows New Orleans well since her Dark-Hunter series is set primarily there, KCON (Kenyon Convention) is in or around the French Quarter each year and she lived in NO at one time. I had family in Louisiana at one time and still do in Biloxi, Mississippi, plus friends in NO. I’ve fished from many of the coastal Louisiana towns along the Gulf of Mexico and had a business in NO at one time, so Louisiana has been a favorite location of mine for many years. Even with all this background, we spent time there last fall “walking the land” so we had fresh images…

One of the things that satisfies me most about writing is exploring the characters’ fears, their hopes, and dreams. Each book has had something new for me and I’ve enjoyed stretching myself—and I’ve especially enjoyed torturing—um, I mean pushing—the hero and heroine. It isn’t always deliberate, but if I have a heroine who’s afraid she’s going to fall to the dark side in her magical world, you can bet she’s going to end up in a situation where that’s tested. IN TWILIGHT’S SHADOW (Jun 3, 2008) gave me something different to think about—risk. I’d explored the idea of courage in an earlier book, but I never thought about risk until Maia and Creed’s story. Maia was a troubleshooter for a society of magic users and she gambled her job, her standing, even her life by playing with black magic. She lost. Certain that her sister, Ryne, would be sent to hunt her, Maia gave up her magic, but she also gave up the only world she’s ever known. Considered an outsider among her people, she lives a human life. She has a job she hates, a mortgage, and bills. And she’s playing it safe now, afraid to take a chance…

I love to get lost in a good book. Love to let the hours slip away as I become drawn into a great read. I love to laugh and cry and have my husband look at me like I’m crazy. Oh, yeah, sometimes getting lost in a book can be a wonderful thing. When I’m reading—I want to get so drawn into a story that I consider myself lost. But, when I’m writing a book, well, getting lost can have a whole new meaning for me… I’m finishing up work on my latest novel, part of my “Midnight” paranormal series for Kensington Brava. And I have to say—I think I’ve gotten lost in this book—but not necessarily lost in the good way. You see, all of my free time is consumed by this book. I’m so deeply into my demon story that all my energy is consumed by the tale. So that means the rest of my life is getting a bit lost, too. I walked into my dining room earlier and wondered when all of the lights in the chandelier (there are twelve of them) had stopped working. Surely not all at once. This had to be a gradual…

Thanks so much for having me as a guest at Fresh Fiction. I’m thrilled to be here! For me, knowing where a character hails from is an essential part of figuring out what makes them tick. This background—the place and time—is especially vital for the vampire characters in my new novel, WICKED GAME (Pocket Books, May 13). My vamps are psychologically and culturally stuck in the era in which they were ‘turned,’ making them walking, stalking time capsules (and perfect for their jobs as disc jockeys at WVMP, The Lifeblood of Rock ‘n’ Roll). WICKED GAME’s hero Shane McAllister, for example, was born in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1968. He was just a boy when the steel mills closed, collapsing the city’s economy. Shane’s own family fell into poverty and despair. Growing up poor made him tough and pessimistic, but it also gave him a core of compassion and understanding. The oldest vampire DJ, blues musician Monroe Jefferson, hails from Natchez, Mississippi. He grew up in a place and time governed by Jim Crow laws, which institutionalized racial segregation. Even now, he’s extremely cautious around the heroine of WICKED GAME, since in Monroe’s day in the Deep South, a black man…

I’ve been told that Jazz, the witchy heroine in 50 Ways to Hex Your Lover and I are very much alike. So let’s look at the similarities. Jazz and I both speak our minds at times, but she can says what I’d love to say and have magic if she needs it. She’s snarky. I’m snarky. She has red hair. I have red hair. She’s tall. I’m short. She’s gorgeous. I’m short. I think many of us would say we echo at least one of our characters. I know that’s happened to me, but never more than with Jazz. She’s lived with me for quite awhile as I worked on the book and then had no choice but to work on the second book, Hex Appeal, which comes out this November. She also gives me the chance to stick bits of history in the book. After all, she and her witch friends have been around for 700 years. She’s lived history, had passionate ups and downs with Nikolai Gregorivich, a vampire enforcer from The Protectorate who’s now a private investigator. She’s dealing with a cranky ghost haunting her beloved 1956 T-Bird convertible and having to keep a tight rein on…

Most writers know – and dread – it: the horrid mid-book blues. That point when the sizzle disappears from your story and it becomes the most awful thing written in the history of mankind. No, indeed, the most awful thing written in the history of the whole wide world! Really, if dinosaurs would have been able to write, even they would have produced so much better stories than you! You are a fraud! And should you ever manage to finish the book and to hand it in, your poor editor and agent will most certainly drop dead because of the awfulness of it. And it will be all your fault! As you might have guessed, I am intimately acquainted with the aforementioned horrid mid-book blues. Only in my case, it’s doesn’t happen when I reach the middle of a book, no, it usually happens when I reach the end of chapter 3. I happily scribble away for the first 50-75 pages and then, all of a sudden, I’m stuck, my characters are stuck, my Muse has vanished, and the story has screeched to a perfect standstill. What is a poor writer to do? 1) Phone a friend and whine. 2)…

Hi Everyone! I’m so excited to be here! And many thanks to the folks of Fresh Fiction for inviting me to their blog. I’ve met several of the ladies in person at Celebrate Romance in Columbia, SC, and let me tell you, they are a fun group! CR was my first ever conference, both as a reader and as an author, and I can tell you I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Rubbing elbows with some of my favorite authors, and getting to know the folks who love to read! What could be better? It was a wonderful experience, and one I shall always remember. I only wish I could make it to RWA or to RT this year, but sadly I will be unable to join all the wonderful authors and readers at those two. So instead, I thought I’d introduce myself here at Fresh Fiction and answer the one important question I seem to get. “Why Shape shifters?” Paranormal romance in general constitutes so many different types of creatures. There’s the vampires we all know and love. The demons we are just learning to have love affairs with, the selkies, the faeries, and even more. So what makes the shape…