with JoAnn Smith Ainsworth
We are delighted to welcome novelist JoAnn Smith Ainsworth to Omnimystery News today.
JoAnn's most recently published novel of romantic suspense is Expect Trouble (Dark Oak Mysteries; February 2014 trade paperback), an excerpt of which we'll have for you in a couple of weeks.
We recently had the chance to talk to JoAnn about her books.
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Omnimystery News: Into which genre — or genres — would you put your books?
Photo provided courtesy of
JoAnn Smith Ainsworth; Photo credit Clay McLachlan.
JoAnn Smith Ainsworth: They're probably best described as cross-overs. For example, looking at my two most recently published books, The Farmer and the Wood Nymph is a historical western romantic mystery while Expect Trouble is a historical paranormal thriller with romantic elements.
OMN: Give us a summary of Expect Trouble in a tweet.
JSA: During WWII, the U.S. government recruits a team of psychics to locate Nazi spies on the East Coast.
OMN: Describe your writing process.
JSA: I'm a structured person — a plotter. Before I ever write a word of the novel, I do research, have the main characters fleshed out, develop my story question and theme, write a tag line and pitch sentence, and outline the whole novel in Excel. Of course, the outline can and does change as I begin to write. When I wrote my first novel, I tried the intuitive approach of sitting down at a keyboard and seeing what flows out, but it just didn't work for me.
My daily routine is to wake early in the morning, do a half hour of exercise, write for 3-4 hours on my laptop in my pj's, then rest a bit before showering and going downstairs for lunch. In the afternoon, I check my email, return phone calls, and handle household and marketing needs. The only time my routine slips is the weeks before and after a book release. Then everything flip flops. Marketing and "taking care of business" take priority. I squeeze writing in when I have the energy.
OMN: When planning a novel, how do you decide if it will be a stand-alone or one of a series?
JSA: My first novel, Matilda's Song, was written as a stand-alone medieval romantic suspense. I found I liked the time period so I wrote a second one, Out of the Dark, and incorporated Matilda as a friend. I enjoyed revisiting the same character so I intentionally wrote the next two (Polite Enemies and The Farmer and the Wood Nymph) as a two-book series but in the style of a stand-alone novel. These books are separate stories about two cousins, even though the follow-on story begins the morning after the first book ends.
In Out of the Dark, I introduced a touch of paranormal in the ghost of a paternal grandmother and I found I liked working with paranormal. I intentionally wrote Expect Trouble as a paranormal thriller series (with three initial stories in mind for the heroine/hero and additional stories for others on the psychic team).
OMN: How much of your own personal or professional experience have you included in your books?
JSA: I grew up with grandparents who were born in the late 1800s. The pioneering spirit of those immigration movements to the U.S. and onward to settle the West lived in my grandparents. They saw relatives and children enlisted to fight both world wars. They survived the Great Depression.
Since I write in historical settings, these early experiences did much to shape my novels so that readers have said the settings and characters were so well described they felt they could reach out and touch them.
My grandparents lived with implements and furniture from the late 1800's farming communities, the Victorian period and the 1920's flapper beaded dresses. Some of these experiences translate directly into my novels.
For instance, my great Aunt Martha cooked and baked on a wood-burning stove. My western heroines cook meals and can fruits and vegetables on such a stove. I saw trucks deliver blocks of ice and farmers sell freshly slaughtered meat from trucks. I'm using these experiences in my paranormal suspense series set in WWII. I was alive in WWII and lived in Philadelphia in the 1950's. All that knowledge is incorporated into my novels to make them come alive.
OMN: What's next for you?
JSA: I'm writing book two of a three-book Operation Delphi paranormal thriller series. Five psychics (assigned to the U.S. Navy) hunt WWII Nazi spies on the East Coast. The hero is the skeptical Navy commander in charge of setting up the project and the heroine is the clairvoyant U.S. WAVE assigned to oversee the top secret facility. Each psychic has a unique skill to bring to the mix (clairvoyant, medium, crystal ball reader, laying-on-of-hands healer, and seer of ghosts).
In the first book, they use their psychic skills to uncover Nazi spies. As the book develops, they get to know one another enough to accept that each will watch the other's "psychic" back.
The second book brings in black magic. The psychics must reach beyond their individual skills and unite as a group to fight back.
In book three, the hero and heroine travel to wore-torn London to retrieve a book of counter spells, which was smuggled out of Bavaria by the heroine's family as Hitler was increasing his control on Germany. What they don't know is that a Nazi assassin is shadowing their steps and has orders to kill them after they find the book of spells and take the book to Hitler.
A romance between the heroine and the hero develops slowly over the course of the three novels.
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JoAnn Smith Ainsworth experienced food ration books, Victory Gardens and black-out sirens as a child in WWII. These memories help her create vivid descriptions of time and place, which put you in the middle of the story as a participant in a fast-paced journey through paranormal realms as U.S. psychics hunt down Nazi spies.
She has B.A. and M.A.T. degrees in English and has completed her M.B.A. studies. JoAnn currently lives in California.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at JoAnnSmithAinsworth.com or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Expect Trouble
JoAnn Smith Ainsworth
A Novel of Romantic Suspense
Opening herself to ridicule by revealing she's clairvoyant is the last thing U.S. WAVES Lieutenant Livvy Delacourt wants, but when Uncle Sam needs her skill to track Nazi spies, she jumps in with both feet.
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