TOP FIVE WITH JOY NASH

Where do you get your ideas?

A *lot* of people ask me this. Actually *everyone* asks me this. I always am a little taken aback by it, because people always seem to think that ideas are hard to come by. They’re not. Ideas are like raindrops in a thunderstorm. As long as you’re not hiding inside the house, it’s impossible to avoid them. The bigger problem is capturing the ideas, figuring out which are the best ones, developing them, and combining them into a story. How does a writer learn to do that? By just…doing it, as they say at Nike. You write a story, then another, then another, hopefully getting better at it every time.

So where do the ideas come from? There are two answers–“everywhere” and “I don’t know.” Everything I experience, or hear about, or read about in the news, etc, can be a jumping off point for something in a story. Other times ideas just seem to pop into my head out of nowhere, or more likely from my subconscious (or perhaps a past life?) without any warning at all.

How do you find time to write?

Well, it’s not easy, especially if you have a lot of family stuff going on, or a day job. I have both, though thankfully my day job is part time. The best time of day for me to write is in the morning, so I try to avoid doing anything but writing in the mornings (this is not always possible!). Counting backwards from my deadline, I figure out how many pages per day I have to write, revise, or edit, then I do everything possible to make that daily page count. Panic sets in. That’s a powerful incentive to ignore housework, errands, paying bills, shopping, TV, Internet, email, whining kids, etc, until my morning writing is done. I do research reading in the evening, and when I’m close to a deadline, I’m editing morning, noon and night–while the house goes to hell around me. My advice to aspiring writers? Learn to live in chaos!

Isn’t writing romance all about sex?

Hmm…well, it’s not *all* about the sex. It’s about character, and plot, and setting, and dialogue, and conflict, and tone, and voice, and a whole lot of other things. Including love…and sex. That said, there are romance writers out there who will try to tell you that romance novels are not really about sex at all. Okay, love doesn’t equal sex, but…come on. By definition, a romance is a book about two people who fall in love and end up married. And they don’t live platonically ever after. When, why, how, and where they do it are definitely factors that help keep pages turning.

What do you do when you get writer’s block?

I don’t believe in writer’s block, which is a good thing because when you’re working on tight deadlines, you can’t afford the luxury of the kind of writer’s block you see in movies about writers. You know, where the character in the movie sits and stares moodily at his/her computer or typewriter all day waiting for inspiration to create the perfect sentence. In my experience, perfect sentences aren’t created out of nothing, they’re created from less-than-perfect sentences, which are often created from atrocious sentences. On the first draft, I give myself permission to write whatever comes into my head–and there’s always something. It might get deleted later, but more often it changes into something I like.

What’s up next for you?

Next up…the Druids of Avalon return in January 08 with Deep Magic, the sequel to my 2006 release The Grail King. I love this book! Both the hero and the heroine are very special to me. Marcus Aquila appeared in my first book for Dorchester, Celtic Fire, as the ten year old son of Lucius Aquila. He made a second appearance in The Grail King, which won the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Historical Fantasy. In that book Marcus was the rival of Owein, an embittered Druid warrior hero, for the affections of Clara, Owein’s heroine. In Deep Magic, Marcus, who distrusts magic heartily, meets his match in Gwen, the Druidess Guardian of Avalon. Gwen’s magic includes the dangerous Deep Magic talent of wolf shapeshifting–a power she can’t always control. I’ve wanted to write a wolf shapeshifter character for years…and Gwen, who is emotionally very conflicted, was a wonderful heroine to write. Gwen and Marcus really heat things up in Deep Magic!