Welcome back to Duck Chat!

Debut author Judi Fennell joins us today to talk about her new series and a lot of other fun stuff.

Judi’s first book in her Mer series is In Over Her Head and it’s flying off the shevles as people find out about it, and it’s getting some great buzz all over the place. Her very first taste at publication came when Reader’s Digest ran a pieces of hers and that led to her stories finaling in contest after contest.

Like most authors she caught the writing bug early, mesmerizing anyone and everyone with her stories, and now she’s actually living her dream and loving every minute of it. Judi is married and has a houseful of kids and pets. She loves pop culture and, in her words, “manipulating language.” That alone should make reading her books loads of fun for readers. Well, sexy mermen are a plus too!

Judi has kindly offered a charming mermaid cell phone charm has a giveaway today, so be sure to leave a meaningful comment or question for her and we’ll put you in the running. A picture of the charm is included below in the interview. Now let’s chat!

DUCK CHAT: Wow, Judi, folks are clamoring for your new books! Congratulations. First would you tell us the idea behind the stories and how they’ve evolved into the books now being published?

JUDI FENNELL: I didn’t start In Over Her Head thinking there would be a Mer series. I was actually writing another series of twists on Fairy Tales: Beauty and The Best, Cinda Bella, Fairest of Them All. The next one in the series was a twist on The Little Mermaid and the easiest way to twist it was to make HIM the Mer. So I did. Then I entered the story in an online contest similar to American Idol, called First Chapters Romance on Gather.com. (Beauty and The Best was one of the Top 20 Finalists in the original First Chapters contest for all genre fiction, out of almost 2700 entries, as well as a finalist in the third American Title Contest sponsored by Romantic Times Magazine and Dorchester Publishing.)

I hadn’t planned on entering any online contests (people were sick of me asking them to vote for my story), but the day the contest was announced I had more than 100 people I didn’t know email me to ask me to enter. So I quickly edited In Over Her Head and entered.

When it made the Top 5 Finalists and was going to the final round judges, I knew I wanted the judges to know (two editors, the CEO of Gather.com and Sue Grimshaw, Romance Buyer for Borders Books) that I wasn’t a one-trick pony. That this world I’d built could lend itself to other books. So I came up with the partials for the next two books in the series and waited. In the interim, I garnered multiple agent offers, accepted one, then didn’t win a publishing contract from the contest. Sue Grimshaw was a big advocate of the story and gave me some great advice, as well as talking it up to editors for me, and once my editor, Deb Werksman at Sourcebooks, learned there was more than just one story, it went pretty quickly. From submission to Deb to an accepted agreement, was one month.

DC: In Over Her Head hit the shelves last month. This is Reel and Erica’s book. Would you give our readers a little insight into their story?

JF: Reel is the second son of the Mer ruler, destined by the gods to be The Spare, and, therefore, has legs and a mortal life span. His brother, Rod, gets the throne, all the power, a tail, and Immortality. It kinda rankles him. Throw in the fact that whatever he does is never good enough for his father—including the fact that he almost revealed his existence to a Human girl when they were both kids—and Reel has kind of tossed in the towel on ever living up to his father’s expectations.

Then Erica—the girl, now woman, he fell in love with all those years ago—is in the water, shot by her ex-fiancé. There’s a shark about to eat her, and, well, the hell with the rules about not letting Humans know about Mers. He has to save her. And the only way he can do that is by kissing water-breathing ability into her. But, by doing so, he’s now condemned her to a life under the sea, something Erica, who’s terrified of the ocean all thanks to some incident she doesn’t remember from her childhood, doesn’t like at all—especially when The Oceanic Council demands that she and Reel recover the stolen diamonds she’d accidentally thrown overboard from her ex-fiancé’s boat (hence the reason she was in the water in the first place).

So Erica and Reel are off on an undersea adventure to recover the stolen diamonds, outwit a few sea monsters, and somehow come to terms with their diverse lives and the growing attraction between them.

That special treat time – an excerpt from In Over His Head:

Reel crossed his arms and studied her. “You’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would. I didn’t know Humans had such open minds.”

“Apparently we have lots of neat tricks, us humans. Like breathing water, for instance.” Erica sucked in a few pints just for kicks and giggles. She hoped she remembered this hallucination when her body recovered from the bends.

“Actually, you can’t breathe water.”

“But I am, ergo, I can.” She demonstrated again.

“Well, that’s only because I did that to you. To save your life.”

“Oh. Right.” She choked on that last pint. “Um, to save my life? Well, that’s a relief. I had thought that I might be um, well, dead, but then, this certainly isn’t my idea of Heaven. So, I’m alive but unconscious? I just have the bends, right? I mean, yes, I’m seeing you as a naked, water-breathing stud-muffin, but you’re really just an illusion, aren’t you? Maybe a doctor at the hospital some passing boater took me to?”

Reel didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The tittering of the little fish scattered among the whelk art answered for him.

“Um, Reel…?”

“Erica, I think you better rest on the bottom.”

“Why?” She did as he suggested, but put her hands up as he floated toward her. He had to be a figment of her imagination. He had to.

“Sweetheart, you’ve been out for a few days and you’re not in a hospital. You can’t have the bends because you never went up to the surface. Chum reminded me about them, actually. So I did the only thing I could.”

His face was grave, which, considering the situation, might not be an appropriate analogy, but then, what was appropriate when facing the impossible?

“What. Did. You. Do?”

“I turned you.”

“Turned me?” Somehow, that phrase did not offer comfort.

“Yes. Into a water-breather.” He crossed his arms, which flared some really nice pecs that tapered down to slim hips and–

Wait a minute–

“A fish? You turned me into a fish?” Forget the pecs. And other parts.

“Not a fish. Do you see any fins? Gills? You’re not even a Mer. I just gave you the ability to breathe underwater. Otherwise, you would’ve drowned. And Vincent would’ve had the right to, well, eat you. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“Of course you couldn’t.” Well, see? That made sense. “And Vincent was the, um, shark?”

“That’s right.” The faintest glimmer of pearly whites showed between his lips.

“And he wanted me for dinner.”

“Yes.” A bigger smile.

“So you somehow managed to re-route my entire oxygenation system and voila! Here I am at the bottom of the sea.”

“That’s it.” Full-out grin going.

“I’m going to be sick.” She turned her face to the side and felt her insides heave.

But then the floor blinked at her.

“What the hell was that?” she screamed, crab-walking backward.

“Flounder. They like to hang out in here since no predators are allowed.”

She put a hand on her chest, her heart beating three times as fast as normal. Or was that now normal with her newly-acquired aqua lungs? “Well there’s a relief. So I won’t have to worry about my body being torn apart by Vincent or others like him? Good to know. Now if I could only guarantee my mind won’t fall apart, I’ll be just fine.”

DC: I’ve heard writers often say their stories take them in surprising directions, or dialogue flows from some unknown place. Is it the same with you? Do your characters surprise you sometimes?

JF: Do they ever! I had no idea when I started that Reel had a twin brother named Rod. I had no idea why he’s the smart ass that he is. When the scene happens where he thinks something so bitter, so emotional, I kind of sat back and went, “Oh! That’s why he is the way he is!” It was a poignant moment for me, the author, to really get to know my characters. That’s why I don’t like to do character sketches or interviews with the characters. I love discovering them and why they are the way they are.

DC: Do you ever argue with your characters while you’re writing? Who usually wins?

JF: Heh. When I was writing Catch of a Lifetime, the third book in the series, the story started to go in a direction I hadn’t intended/foreseen/wanted. I tried to steer it back to where I thought it should go. The characters just wouldn’t let me. I know from past writing experience to let them tell the story, so I went with it. Turns out there was a whole bunch of stuff in my subconscious that knew where the story needed to go and I absolutely love the story. So I guess you’d say the characters usually win.

DC: Though it probably gets asked a lot at this point, tell us about “the call.” It has to be doubly sweet now that the reading community is embracing your books so warmly and so quickly.

JF: My editor and I have known each other for a while and she’d already rejected a few projects. I saw her at the Long Island Luncheon and she said she wanted something to work for us and to send her the last project she’d rejected and she’d give me feedback to make it workable. So I knew she wanted to work with me and I definitely wanted to work with her. Deb is amazing when she edits my stories—she can see exactly what needs tweaking. Anyhow, I told her that she had In Over Her Head in her queue, and then the fact that it was part of a series and the other two partials were done came up. She immediately jumped on that, told me to send them to her, which I did on Monday. Four weeks later, she called me to tell me she was taking it in to editorial, and I could probably expect to hear from her in two days. That flew out the window when I got an email from her while she was in the meeting the next day that they wanted to buy the series. So, it wasn’t quite The Call, more like The Email. When I opened The Email, I yelped, then ran into my family room and cried. Kids and Hubs gave me hugs, I made a few phone calls, then grabbed a book and hit the sofa to read it. It was an incredible feeling that I hope everyone gets to experience.

DC: What is sure to distract you from sitting down and working/writing?

JF: A mess. I can’t work when my work area or rooms that I pass through are a mess. It drives me crazy. That’s why, if I’m under deadline, I’ll leave my office and go to Borders or Barnes & Noble to write.

DC: Your second book, Wild Blue Under, will be out in November. Can you give us a sneak peek into Rod and Valerie’s story?

JF: Rod is the heir to the Mer throne but he can’t take over until he fulfills The Prophecy—to bring the lost Mer princess back to Atlantis. Trouble is, Valerie lives in Kansas, has no idea she’s half-Mer and thinks she’s allergic to the ocean.

DC: Is there another genre you would like to try in the future?

JF: Not right now. I’m writing the kinds of stories I like to read, so I’m very happy where I am.

DC: What advice would you give to your younger self?

JF: Ah, woulda/coulda/shoulda. I knew years ago that romance writing was what I wanted to do, but I didn’t pursue it. It wasn’t until my youngest started school that I focused on it. My advice would be to have started writing earlier and to have joined RWA back then.

DC: You’ve got a terrific contest running on your website. Would you like to tell our readers about it?

JF: I’ve teamed up with the Atlantis Inn in Ocean City, NJ and the Hibiscus House B&B in West Palm Beach, FL to offer a romantic beach getaway weekend for each book release. The first drawing was held on June 30, 2009 and the winner was Kate Hackett from Belcamp, MD. The next drawing is November 30, 2009 (Wild Blue Under releases Nov 1), followed by another drawing on February 28, 2010 (Catch of a Lifetime releases Feb 1). All the rules and entry information are on my website, and if you enter for November’s drawing, you’re automatically entered for February’s.

DC: If you were a book, what would your blurb be?

JF: Stay-at-home-mom by day, Romance writer by night, Judi Fennell has a brain full of useless trivia that somehow ends up showing up in her stories.

DC: What would be your “voice’s” tagline?

JF: Tongue-in-cheek, light-hearted paranormal.

DC: Catch of a Lifetime is Logan and Angel’s book and it’s due out in February of next year. Can give us a look into what we can expect in their story?

JF: Angel Tritone is a Mer princess determined to earn the position of Director of the Mer/Human Coalition, but Rod, her brother, the High Councilman, won’t let her even apply for the job. So she sets out to prove herself worthy, only to have to swim from a hammerhead bent on a Mer meal and ends up on a Human’s boat.

Logan Hardington has a surprise six-year-old son show up who wants a mermaid for his birthday. Right. Like mermaids are real. Besides, the last thing Logan needs after his flighty, irresponsible, obviously birth-control-challenged ex-girlfriend is anything out of the ordinary. Having grown up in the circus and run away from it, all Logan wants is Normal.

So when a naked woman shows up on his boat and his son demands she be his babysitter, Logan is determined that normal is what his son’s life will be. Problem is, he can’t decide if Angel is just another fish in the sea or the Catch of a Lifetime.

DC: Will there be any other related books to these three down the road?

JF: As I said to my editor, it’s a big ocean out there. I’ve got ideas for Mariana’s and Pearl’s stories, as well as a few others, so we’ll see.

DC: If you had never become an author, what do you think you would be doing right now?

JF: I was a professional meeting planner before having children, a job I absolutely loved. The travel aspect, however, didn’t work with our version of a family, so I stayed home. I would probably go back into that industry later on in life, but I would much rather be doing this.

DC: What’s on the horizon for Judi Fennell?

JF: Hopefully a long writing career.

Lightning Round:

– dark or milk chocolate?    – Milk
– smooth or chunky peanut butter?     – Smooth
– heels or flats?    – Heels
– coffee or tea?     – Hot chocolate
– summer or winter?     – Winter
– mountains or beach?      – Mountains
– mustard or mayonnaise?     – Mustard
– flowers or candy?     – Flowers (roses, lavender)
– pockets or purse?     – Pockets whenever possible
– Pepsi or Coke?     – Rootbeer
– ebook or print?    – Print

And because we still have a lot of fun with them:

1. What is your favorite word?    – I’ve got two – Triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13) because it’s fun to say and I love the number 13, and joie de vivre because it’s fun to pronounce and I love its meaning – joy of life.
2. What is your least favorite word?    – Can’t say it here, but most women hate this word.
3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?    – Laughter
4. What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotionally?    – Bad news/bad attitudes around me
5. What sound or noise do you love?    – Those quiet sighs a newborn baby makes.
6. What sound or noise do you hate?     – Napkins being ground between your teeth (my sister does this just to annoy me – still!)
7. What is your favorite curse word?    –  Freakin’
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?   – Movie star (this is not a surprise to people who know me)
9. What profession would you not like to do?     – Oyster diver-I’m a big chicken when it comes to the ocean, which made writing Erica’s fear so easy to do.
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?      -“We’ve been waiting an awfully long time for you to get here!”

Thanks so much for having me!

DC: And thank you, Judi, for spending the day with us!