Guest Author: Sabrina Jeffries
Today’s
guest author obtained a Ph.D. in English literature but made the decision to
leave her academic career behind her for the “sheer joy of writing fun
fiction”. It’s a decision I have no doubt has kept many a reader up late at
night being totally absorbed in her stories—laughing out loud one page and
reaching for a handkerchief on the next! This talented lady, from North
Carolina, is a NY Times and USA Today Best Selling author who has over 9
million books in print in 20 different languages, and her novels are always
bound to please. All the awards she’s won are too numerous to mention, but
include the Holt Medallion Award, The Maggie, and The Booksellers’ Best.
I’ve
met up with Sabrina Jeffries at a couple of RT Conventions over the years and
always look forward to having my fan girl moments with her and snapping a
picture with her in one of her period costumes. I’ve also managed to see her
again, albeit very briefly, at the Booklovers Convention in New Orleans in May.
I’m hoping in 2021 to accept the invitation to attend the Historical Retreat
event which Sabrina has described as “Disneyland for historical romance fans”.
It sounds like an absolute ball!
Thank you for being my guest today,
Sabrina. I’d like first to ask you about your latest release and whether it
posed any particular challenges to write.
My latest, Project Duchess in my
new Duke Dynasty series, did prove challenging, mostly because it was the first
of the series. Since it was about a blended family, I had a rough time
explaining who everyone was in relation to everyone else without using gobs of
narration. Fortunately, my editor came up with the idea of using a newspaper
gossip column to provide the explanations naturally. That worked very well.
I’m looking forward to reading it when it’s
released next week! (Release Date is June 25th!)
You’ve written under a couple of different
pen names. I’m guessing that you used a different pen name (Deborah Nicholas)
for your contemporary paranormal romantic suspense (eg. Night Vision, Silent
Sonata and Shattered Reflections) because this was a different read from your
historical romances. But I’m curious as to why you chose to write historical
romances as Deborah Martin between 1992 and 1997 (titles such as Windswept,
Stormswept and Silver Deceptions have now been reissued as Sabrina Jeffries
writing as Deborah Martin). Can you let us in on your rationale for that?
I wrote as Deborah Martin (it’s my
maiden name) in my “first” historical career. Basically, as you guessed,
pseudonyms are meant to distinguish between different styles or genres of
writing. In my case, my Sabrina Jeffries books are lighter, sexier historical
romances than my Deborah Martin books were. They have more dialogue and more
sensuality, but less density and history-based plots. Also, none of my Deborah
Martin books were Regencies. So my Sabrina Jeffries pseudonym came into being
when I finally decided to try my hand at writing the humorous Regencies I’d
always preferred to read.
The Sabrina Jeffries pseudonym has been
very successful and I do get that pseudonyms are meant to distinguish between
different styles. Escape publishing asked me to write under a different name
for my medieval romances so I write them as Alyssa James.
I love your website and I love reading the
“Regency Tidbits” section that you include on your page. What’s the most
unusual ‘regency tidbit’ that you’ve discovered and been able to incorporate
into one of your stories?
It would have to be the stuff about the
children’s peep show boxes (not at all like peep shows came to be in the modern
age). While I was writing Married to the Viscount and on vacation in New
York with my husband, I happened to see two of the boxes at an exhibit at the
New York Public Library. They fascinated me, and I needed something to humanize
Spencer a little, so I couldn’t resist incorporating them into his book. Oddly
enough, I don’t have that in my Regency Tidbits. Now I’ll have to add it!
I know you love to travel and I love to
live vicariously through your posts on Facebook when you’re doing so. I read
that your parents were missionaries and their work took you to live in Thailand
as a child. I also read that you were chased by a baby elephant in Thailand!
What’s one of your most memorable travelling stories as an adult?
This really shouldn’t stymie me, but it
does. As an adult, I’ve had plenty of experiences, but they’re not that
memorable. There was the sheer terror of riding on horseback with my husband
down a muddy trail during our honeymoon in Mexico and wondering if we were
going to go sliding to our death before we got to see the waterfalls at the
bottom. There was the thrill of actually seeing in the British Museum the
metope that I used in a love scene in The Forbidden Lord. There was the
sadness of standing on the site of a Metairie restaurant that my husband and I
used to go to and realizing that the floor was all that was left of it after
Hurricane Katrina.
Actually, many of my fondest travel
memories center around food—like the many international versions of pizza we’ve
eaten through the years (in Bangkok, Amsterdam, Paris, London, and Reykjavik).
Sometimes, the only thing open late at night is a pizza restaurant . . . even
in Amsterdam. Also, I always insist on eating haggis when we’re in Scotland (I
happen to like haggis), so I got into a very interesting discussion with a
Scottish cabbie who told me all about how everyone has their own recipe for
haggis, which is why every time I’ve had it, it’s been different. My husband
and I also had rijsttafel in Amsterdam, which is an Indonesian meal that is
also uniquely Dutch. And we had great Asian food in Paris—we gorged on
Cambodian and Laotian food there.
Sorry, I get carried away when talking
about travel. And yet, I don’t seem to have many memorable stories as an adult!
Go figure.
As these memories do centre around food, you’ll have
to visit if you come to Australia and I’ll serve you up some Aussie dishes! I’m
afraid you’re on your own with the haggis.
My husband and I travelled with our three kids for
three months in the UK/Europe and we were at the Glasgow Games where we all
took part in the Haggis throwing competition they had for spectators.
The kids still talk about how the lady who ran the
B&B we stayed in went out early in the morning to the shops so she could
treat us to Black Pudding for breakfast. Being polite, we forced it down, but I’m
thinking it’s an acquired taste—a bit like when tourists try Vegemite in
Australia and wonder how any of us eat it!! (I promise I won’t serve you
vegemite!)
What’s next for you as an author?
Right now I'm starting to plot Thorn's
book. I am so much in early days for it that I can't even tell you what it's
about, since I don't know yet. But between Grey's book and Thorn's is the book
about Beatrice's brother Joshua and Thorn's twin sister Gwyn. The title is The
Bachelor (all the titles of the books—and only the titles—are based
on reality TV shows). Between Project Duchess and The Bachelor is
a novella entitled The Perfect Match, which will come out this Christmas in a
trade paperback called Seduction on a Snowy Night and which also
includes novellas by Madeline Hunter and Mary Jo Putney.
I’ll look forward to all the titles. Thanks again for
the interview! I hope I’ll see you next year in Nashville for Booklovers Con
2020!
You
can find out more about Sabrina by visiting her website sabrinajeffries.com.
and can also subscribe to her newsletter while you’re there!
Do
note that June 25th is a HUGE day for releases. All of these books
will be added to my To Be Read pile:
Project
Duchess by Sabrina Jeffries
The
Highland Earl by Amy Jarecki and
Rogue
Most Wanted by Janna MacGregor
Janna MacGregor has been a guest on this blog previously and Amy Jarecki joins me next week to
answer five quick questions.
I
hope you’ll visit again next Saturday. Until then, have a wonderful week and I
wish you lots of Happy Reading!
Best
wishes,
Alyssa
(Photo Credit: Sabrina's author photo by Jessica Blakely for Tamara Lackey Photography)
_________________________________________________________________________
About the Blogger:
Alyssa J. Montgomery is an Australian contemporary romance author who is published by Escape Publishing (Harlequin Enterprises, Australia). She also
writes medieval romance as Alyssa James,
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