What counsel would you give new and upcoming authors?
Learn all you can about your craft: story structure, genre,
tropes, grammar, marketing, the publishing world, etc. Then take everything you
learn, set it on the back burner where you can watch it carefully, and tell the
story that’s in your heart. Let your characters tell their story and then mold
that story into something readers will love.
How much do you write everyday?
As much as I possibly can with a full-time job and teenage
children. I don’t set daily word-count goals or try to publish as many books as
I can, as fast as I can. But I write really fast and can type almost as fast as
I can think, so my stories do come quickly. I’m currently averaging about four
or five books a year.
How do you promote your books?
That is probably one of my biggest weaknesses. I’m really
busy at work and with my kids and with my writing and reading that I really
haven’t done much advertising or promoting. Eventually I will focus more on
that, but I currently don’t sell many books. I just write them and publish them
and let my readers love them. When I do finally start promoting them I’ll
probably focus on Facebook ads and Amazon ads. I’ve heard those work the best.
When I do promote my books through blogs and Instafreebie and My Book Cave,
it’s usually more as a reader magnet to get people onto my newsletter email
list.
What kind of research do you do?
I love YouTube, Google and Google Maps. I’ve stood
backstage at rock concerts, toured the world as a groupie, eaten as countless
restaurants, and even learned to surf from the comfort of my home in rural
Michigan.
How did you get started as an author?
Other than my writing a novel in junior high (which I threw
away afterward), and my research papers in high school and college, my first
published work was my master’s thesis.
One night a few years ago I had a weird dream that woke me
up at three in the morning. I got up and went to my computer and started
typing. I barely ate or slept for almost three weeks then sat back and realized
I’d written a novel. After countless revisions and edits, that manuscript
became my first published novel, The Cove.
After that I wrote The Farmer’s Daughter (which has yet to
be published and is sitting in my computer waiting for revisions), then Buxton
Peak popped up out of nowhere and has taken over my life. Several side stories
have pulled me briefly away from my rockstars, like The Man in the Yellow
Jaguar, a couple of short stories, and my works in progress, The Refusal, The
Overlook, and my Love Letters series (kind of a spin on the television show The
Bachelorette).
If my rockstars would ever shut up and let me finish these
other stories I may have a more diverse backlist.
What or whom inspired you?
My earliest memory of reading is the Dick & Jane
series, but that’s probably not what you meant. I devoured the Little House on
the Prairie series, Anne of Green Gables, Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, Sweet
Valley High, the Flowers in the Attic series (and everything else V.C. Andrews
wrote), then later Danielle Steel, and much later The Work and the Glory series
and Kingdom of the Crown series by Gerald N. Lund. Lately I’ve been devouring
anything from authors like Victorine Lieske, Michelle Pennington, Elizabeth
(E.J.) McKay (and her penname Bree Livingston), Rachel John and Lisa Rector.
They are my current inspirations.
What writing projects are you currently working on?
My series called Buxton Peak has consumed me for the past
couple of years, but I’ve also written several other stories including my cute
little novella called The Man in the
Yellow Jaguar. I usually have about five or six works-in-progress at any
given time.
Buxton Peak is about a rock band from the UK and was
originally a stand-alone novel that turned into a trilogy of novellas. Now,
I’ve written a prequel and several spin-off stories highlighting a few of the
minor characters from the original trilogy. In that series I’m currently
working on a Billionaire Rockstar Romance that features the main two characters
in the series, Ian Taylor (the rockstar) and the woman who eventually becomes
his wife, Megan. That story is almost complete.
What can you tell us about these projects?
The Buxton Peak series spans a time
period from when Ian Taylor was first identified as a child prodigy and began
obsessively learning how to play any instrument he could get his hands on.
In high school he forms a rock band
with his three best friends, helping them rocket to stardom and all the spoils
that come with it. But center stage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and
brings its own challenges. Life as a rock star wasn’t as easy as he thought it
would be, especially as Ian tries to maintain his Christian values. As the guys
grow up, the original dynamic of the band is lost in the distractions of
substance abuse and women.
As a young adult, Ian longs to be loved by a woman who is
not just after him for his money and his fame, but for who he is on the inside.
When he meets Megan, a small town college girl at church in a remote part of
Michigan, he figures out pretty quickly that she knows nothing about him. So he
makes the decision to hide his fame from her.
His plan backfires when Megan finds out who he really is
and decides she doesn’t want to live her life in his spotlight, with all the
baggage that comes with it. She just wants to live a quiet life in rural
Michigan with a normal husband and family.
While Ian is blinded by love, his band is torn apart by
distractions, temptations, and drug abuse. Ian has to decide if he’s going to
stand beside his mates, letting their problems become his problems, or walk
away. When drugs, betrayal, and tragedy rip the band apart, it takes the
guidance of an inner city youth pastor, who happens to be a really good
drummer, to pull them back to center stage.
The series includes a lot of passion, a lot of catching a
glimpse behind the scenes of life as a rockstar, and a lot of tears. But it
ends on a happy note with the promise that the end of the series is only the
beginning…
My current WIP, my Billionaire Rockstar Romance, covers the
period of time from when Ian meets Megan and ends with her finally agreeing to
marry him. It’s my first sweet romance with all the genre’s tropes and
structure. It will probably be the most mainstream book I’ve ever written. Most
of the rest of the series falls more into the Christian genre with
(closed-door) sex, drugs, and rock & roll to throw the reader off into
social issues that mainstream genres just don’t touch.
I love the series, I love my rockstars. I’m oddly in love
with my guy characters to the point that my husband should probably be jealous…
except that he is my romantic inspiration, and he knows it! Ian Taylor and Kai
Burton are my favorite guys in the Buxton Peak series, and Todd Ramsey is my
favorite from my novel called The Cove. I have lots more books to come. They
just keep writing themselves.
When did you write your first novel?
I wrote my first novel in junior high. It was terrible, but
my friends passed the pages around as fast as I could scrawl them into a
notebook. I would rip out a page and hand it to the person next to me and keep
writing. I’m not sure how I passed seventh grade, or why the teachers didn’t
put a stop to it. I just kept writing, and writing, and writing. I threw the
manuscript away at the end of the school year. What I wouldn’t give to have
those pages back.
What do you want readers to take away from reading your
novel?
There are a lot of social issues in my stories. I didn’t
mean for them to happen that way but my stories have a tendency to address a
lot of controversial topics like drug use and pre-marital relationships. There is
also a lot of coming-of-age self-reflection, growing into the adults God meant
them to be. I want my readers to feel the characters’ emotions and live their
lives vicariously. The best compliments I get from my readers are “I cried,”
and “I didn’t see that twist coming!”
What hobbies do you enjoy when you are not writing?
I have a full-time job as the Administrator of a local
conservation district. I’m very involved in watershed management planning, soil
erosion control projects, computer mapping, wildlife habitat restoration, and political
diplomacy. Very strange departure from writing stories about rock stars, but
I’m very passionate about the work we do at the conservation district and feel
a sense of accomplishment when I can take two opposing sides of an issue and
bring them together to see common ways to solve environmental problems. I also
read a LOT, and love watching my (now grown up) children spread their wings and
fly.
Current New Release: Buxton Peak: London Bridges
Social Media Accounts:
Email: juliespencer1998@gmail.com
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