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JANA RICHARDS (Cont.)
How much of your personality and life experiences
are in your writing?
I suppose it’s inevitable that bits of my personality
and world view seep into my writing.
And there’s maybe a few life experiences
sprinkled here and there. But mostly,
I’m researching situations or events I have
no experience with. And I’m using empathy
to imagine how characters feel in certain
situations.
What kind of research do you do for a book?
I mostly research online, and I often read
books. For example, I just read a novel
written by a survivor of childhood sexual
abuse as research for an upcoming book.
But if I can talk to a real person about a
subject, that’s the gold standard.
Tell us about your latest book. What motivated
the story? Where did the idea come from?
Where do your story ideas usually come from?
TO HEAL A HEART is book two is my
Masonville Small Town series. I love writing
small town romance and I envisioned a
series set in a small town in North Dakota
centered around a couple of families, with
several characters who worked at a veterinary
clinic. I wanted these four couples
(two books are still in the works) to have to
overcome real-life, significant obstacles and
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deep traumas. It gets
even deeper than I first
imagined! Ideas come
from things I read, stories
on TV, or issues I
want to explore.
Do you feel humor is important
in fiction and why?
Absolutely! In a book
like TO HEAL A
HEART, I deal with
some pretty difficult subjects like PTSD
and physical disability. The book could be
quite a downer, so I balanced the serious
stuff with light and humorous dialogue between
characters. I think the humor helps
to get my message across.
Do you have a favorite comment or question
from a reader?
A reviewer who’d never read any of my
books before picked up TO HEAL A
HEART from Net Galley. She emailed me
to say that she reviews about 300 books a
year, and THAT was one of the best she’d
read this year. That certainly made my day!
It’s great to know that all the effort and
time I put into a book resonated with a
reader.
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