Marketing for Romance Writers Magazine February, 2019 Volume # 2, Issue # 2 | Seite 5

JEAN JOACHIM (Cont.)
INTERVIEW
MFRW:
JJ:
MFRW:
JJ:
MFRW:
JJ:
Why did you decide to write romance nov-
els?
Stories and characters landed in my head
and wouldn’t leave until I told their stories.
And they were always romances, often with
other issues thrown in, even with suspense,
but always romance.
How much of your personality and life
experiences are in your writing?
A lot of my life experience is in my stories.
Not specifics as much as feelings. I have
learned much about people. Living life,
observing people over the years has helped
to give me a breadth of understand of hu-
man nature and an empathy for the human
condition that plays a factor in my emo-
tional, realistic stories, and has helped me
shade my characters to give them depth.
What kind of research do you do for a
book?
I research everything, from locations, to
illnesses, to crimes. Before I write a sports
romance, I research the game in depth. I’m
a huge sports fan and played many sports
in my adolescence. Even so, re-
search is necessary to get an under-
standing of the game, the emotions,
the preparation from the inside of a
professional athlete.
MFRW:
Tell us about your
latest book. What motivated the
story? Where did the idea come
from? Where do your story ideas
5
JJ:
MFRW:
JJ:
usually
come
from?
I’m not exactly
sure where my
stories
come
from. I’m a
naturally curious
person. The words ―what if?‖ can start me
off on a new tale. This book, Renovating the
Billionaire began when I went to a garage
sale at a very old, broken-down mansion in
a small town. With 36 rooms, the house
had been magnificent in its day. My ―what
if‖ led me to a poor girl who dreams of
owning and renovating the place. But I had
to block that wish, to have a story. So, I
envisioned a fabulously wealthy man who
inherits the place and simply wants to take
it down. The tug-of-war was the jumping
off point for my book.
Do you feel humor is important in fiction
and why?
I think humor is important in everything in
life! I love to put humor is my stories. You
can choose to either laugh or cry, but if you
laugh, life will be
more fun. I actu-
ally wrote a short
romantic
com-
edy—my first—at
the holidays this
year.