We are delighted to welcome back author JoAnn Smith Ainsworth to Omnimystery News today.
JoAnn has a new Operation Delphi novel out this month, Expect Deception (She Writes Press; June 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats), and we recently had the chance to catch up with her to talk more about the series.
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Omnimystery News: Into which genre would you place the books in the Operation Delphi series?
Photo provided courtesy of
JoAnn Smith Ainsworth;
Photo credit Clay McLachlan.
JoAnn Smith Ainsworth: Expect Trouble and Expect Deception are historical paranormal suspense.
I've also written two medieval romantic suspenses published by Samhain and two historical westerns published by Whiskey Creek Press.
OMN: How would you tweet a summary of Expect Deception?
JSA: During WWII, the U.S. government recruits a team of psychics to locate Nazi spies, one of whom can invoke a demon.
OMN: Tell us a little more about 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 p.j.'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 starting a new project, how do you decide if you'll be writing a series book or a stand-alone?
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 supernatural thriller series (with three initial stories in mind for the current heroine/hero and additional stories for others on the psychic team).
OMN: And which comes first: the cast of characters or the storyline?
JSA: The time period and the story question come first, then I design characters with personalities and traits to resolve the issues raised by the story question. The storyline develops as I think through the steps the characters need to take to be successful, despite human flaws.
OMN: How true are you to the settings in your books?
JSA: I like to use real life buildings and streets in my novels. I research these and work from photos. The buildings where the characters live and work, however, are created out of my imagination to meet the needs of the action in the story.
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 1950s. All that knowledge is incorporated into my novels to make them come alive.
OMN: What's next for you?
JSA: Book two of the Operation Delphi series, Expect Deception, is releasing June 21st from She Writes Press. Expect Betrayal is currently being written. In this 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 administrative aspects of 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 war-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.
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JoAnn Smith Ainsworth experienced food-ration books, victory gardens, and blackout sirens as a child in WWII. These memories help create vivid descriptions of time and place, which makes a participant in a fast-paced journey through paranormal realms as U.S. psychics hunt down Nazi spies. Ms. Ainsworth lives in California. She has BA and MAT degrees in English and has completed her MBA studies. She has published five previous novels.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at JoAnnSmithAinsworth.com and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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Expect Deception by JoAnn Smith Ainsworth
An Operation Delphi Novel
Publisher: She Writes Press
Just when US WAVE Livvy Delacourt thinks she and her team of psychic Nazi hunters are ready for whatever The Reich can throw at them, Hitler adds a spy to the mix who also happens to be a wizard. Now dark magic is being used to attack US facilities, and Livvy must match wits with the evil wizard, whose objective is to destroy Operation Delphi and all her team.
If she fails to ramp up her psychic powers, she may perish — and perhaps cause the US to lose the war with Germany while she's at it.
— Expect Deception by JoAnn Smith Ainsworth. Click here to take a Look Inside the book.
