SPECIAL INTERVIEW WITH JESSICA BARKSDALE INCLAN
Jessica Barksdale Inclan is the best-selling author of women’s fiction and paranormal romance. Her newest romance, How to Bake a Man is a humorous contemporary that readers will be sure to enjoy.
In addition, to being a popular author she writes poetry and teaches literature, mythology and creative writing! I wonder, how this talented author has the spare time to write? And if she could tell us about her latest books!
Here is what she said:
1) Wow! It is such a pleasure to have you on our website. Let's get started with how you got the writing bug? What do you like best about writing?
Jessica Inclan Barksdale: Hi there. Thanks so much for asking me over to tell you all about me To answer your first question, I think I was just born with the desire to first read stories. To hear them read to me by my parents and teachers. I learned as a child that a story was the best thing in the world, and I wanted to write myself.
What I like best about writing is losing myself in that first push of story, when it is all coming out messy but fast.
2) Is there a big difference between writing poetry and fiction? How do you approach each?
Jessica Inclan Barksdale: A poem starts often with just a feeling. A desire to express something ineffable, unknown. With fiction, I have at least a word, a sentence, a name. In fact, I just started a story based on a name I heard somewhere out in the universe: Tiny Higgins. For me, a story needs something tangible. A poem seems deeper and more mysterious, the topic and theme revealing themselves to me as I write.
3) What is your favorite fiction to read? What writers have inspired you writing?
Jessica Inclan Barksdale: I am an omnivorous reader. Mostly during the academic year, I read student work, pieces of novels and stories that my students are writing. I read The New York Times every morning, and in my car, I listen to books, bringing me back to my early love of being read to.
My favorite writers are Jane Austen, John Irving, Alice Hoffman, Toni Morrison, but I love any good story well told.
4) Where do you get your ideas from?
Jessica Inclan Barksdale: Everywhere. My students, the newspaper, my children, my imagination, history. Everything is rife with possibility.
5) You are such a diverse and talented writer. What keeps bringing you back to writing romance?
Jessica Inclan Barksdale: Thank you! What a nice thing to say. The truth about romance is that I’m a sucker for love. It’s just so fun to put two people together in a story and watch them find their way toward each other.
6) Okay, I have loved your paranormal romances. Do you plan to write any more soon?!
Jessica Inclan Barksdale: One of the important aspects for me in terms of my writing practice is the need or desire to write something. The interest and pull toward a particular story. Of late, I haven’t been pulled to a paranormal, but in my long life, I’ve learned to never say never!
7) I loved the idea behind How to Bake a Man! What makes this story so special? Can you tell us more about the heroine, Becca?
Jessica Inclan Barksdale: To some readers, Becca seems insecure. But I’ve been watching young women for 27 years now as a college teacher. They come in, wanting to start their adult lives but unsure which direction to take. They’ve been told they need college, but do they really? What if like Becca their skills lie elsewhere. In her case, her love is baking. It is what sustained her all her life. Baking for Becca is like writing for me. As Becca started baking, I realized that she was baking my mother’s, grandmother’s, and great-grandmother’s recipes. For me, the story seemed even more special as there were the sugar cookies and sand tarts that I grew up with.
8) I noticed that you are now working on a YA novel. Can we please get a sneak peak?!
Jessica Barksdale Inclan: I need to update that bio! My YA had such a crazy experience out in the world. (Almost sold, revised, almost sold, revised. Agent fighting for it. Talks with editors. Despair). But I will tell you that it landed on Kindle. The title is Prime, and it’s free through Kindle Direct.
9) What new adventures do you have planned in your writing?
Jessica Barksdale Inclan: I’ve been publishing a lot of short stories (the links to which are on my web site) and I’ve just completed a novel manuscript titled The Burning Hour, about a young firefighter and an eighty-four-year-old Native American woman. Their paths cross in Northeast Nevada, and as the title suggests, there’s a fire. I just finished my revisions and edits, and we will see what happens. Please cross your fingers for me!
10) It has been such a please having you on our website. Thank you so much for your time :)
Jessica Inclan Barksdale: It’s my pleasure, Steph. I really appreciate the invitation and the visit. Thank you.
Interviewed by Steph from the Bookaholics Romance Book Club
For Additional Information about Jessica Inclan Barksdale her out at:
http://www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com/home.html
Recent and Upcoming Romances by Jessica Inclan Barksdale:
How to Bake a Man -Oct. 21st, 2014
When Becca drops out of grad school, all she has left to fall back on is her baking. With the help of her lizard-booted neighbor Sal, she starts a small business selling her wares to hungry office workers. But things quickly get complicated when she meets the man of her dreams and an arch-enemy, his bitchy lawyer girlfriend. Before long, she s neck-deep in office politics, clandestine romance, and flour. Saving her business (and finding true love) is going to take everything she's got, and more.
Swimming Lessons Kindle -July 24, 2012 Kindle
When Sara Malone's father dies, her overwhelming feelings are of guilt and relief. For years Sara and her younger sister Hope, both star swimmers at their high school, lived in constant anxiety over his abusive demands and pressure to succeed; now it's all over, and the girls can make their own choices and live their own lives.
Hope and their mother both thrive with this new freedom, but for Sara things only seem more complicated. In her grief, she has a surprising and emotional night with her best friend's Maggie's brother Dom, the boy she's idolized for years. To make things worse, Maggie also has hidden feelings for Sara that go beyond friendship, and Sara is stunned when both Maggie and Dom pull away. Feeling abandoned and isolated, Sara spends more time at home alone and in the garden her father once tended. One lonely day, she discovers her father's journals and letters, writing that reveals a side of her father Sara never knew possible. Slowly, Sara works her way through her grief, able at the end of the story to rely not on a friend or boyfriend or even sister but herself.
The Wolf at the Window -April 25, 2010 Kindle
Talaith and Kaherdin should never meet. They should never know each other. They and their people are at war. Her people hold onto the very magic that would change his people’s lives. His people want to kill hers and take what has been withheld for so long. To find each other, to fall in love with each other, to want each other could cause the fragile balance in both their worlds to crack and shatter, changing more than just their own two lives.
The Wolf at the Window is the story of lovers brought together from two different, opposing, warring worlds, a shapeshifting Romeo and Juliet set in a post apocalyptic world, but a story with a happy ending.