Showcase: April's Kiss in the Moonlight by Jean Joachim

How could anything bad happen to a young woman, fresh from graduate school, who strikes out on a new path rather than return to take a job with her father’s firm? April McKenna sets off for an escapade that ends in tragedy. Injured and alone she is taken in by a family friend who lives in a small town in the Catskill Mountains in New York.

During her recovery, April resolves to carve out an exotic life of travel and adventure. But she didn’t count on a sexy fireman upsetting her plans. Gavin Dailey has dated practically every woman in the county, but when he meets April, he knows he’s finally found the one he wants.  Only a stubborn man like Gavin wouldn’t let April’s resistance to his charm and his small town change his plans. Determined to win her, he pulls out all the stops until he encounters one stumbling block he didn’t count on. Only a near-catastrophe resurrected from the past gives April the tenacity she needs to make the right decision for her life in April’s Kiss in the Moonlight. 

This is a sweet contemporary romance with no explicit sex or bad language.

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About the author:  Jean Joachim is an author, married, a mother of two boys and owner of a rescued pug named Homer. She lives in New York City.

An English major in college, Jean always knew she wanted to write but didn’t know where to start. Non-fiction presented the best opportunities so Jean joined the corporate world of advertising and direct marketing. Working her way up the ladder, she became a Media Director, writing business plans, reports and presentations. When she started her own ad agency, she branched out into copywriting and found her niche.

The itch to write began while she was raising her children so she wrote about her experiences with school fund-raising and coaching her son’s soccer team. One article led to another and before long, she made up her mind to attempt a book. Her first book, a non-fiction work titled, “Beyond the Bake Sale, the Ultimate School Fund-Raising Book” was published by St. Martin’s Press in 2003.

Five activity books for Sterling Publishing and a book on advertising for Career Press titled, “151 Quick Ideas for Advertising on a Shoestring” followed. In 2010, fiction beckoned and with her youngest in college, Jean found the time to write “Now and Forever 1, a Love Story.” She fell in love with the contemporary romance and eight books later, she is still writing!

Now and Forever 2, the Book of Danny (sequel to Now and Forever 1, a Love Story) has just been released by Secret Cravings Publishing. Her other works include, Sunny Days, Moonlit Nights, a sweet contemporary romance and its sequel April’s Kiss in the Moonlight, both are available as ebooks, in paperback soon. The first in the New York Nights  novels series, “The Marriage List” is on  Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com for only $.99.

Jean has been writing non-fiction for over fifteen years and fiction for two. Her review column, “Movie Choices for Kids” has been syndicated in weekly and parenting newspapers and on websites for the past eleven years.

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Q&A

Q.  What inspires your writing?

A.  The characters who appear in my head urging me to tell their stories inspire me. It may sound strange but that’s how it works for me. Stories either simply appear or grow from a question I ask myself about a place, people or situation, “what if”.

Q.  What is your favorite thing about being an author?

A.  I love to be carried along by the story. Although I am a plotter, I only prepare a loose outline. Then the characters take the helm and steer me where the story should go. I find that very exciting.

Q.  What is the toughest part of being an author?

A.  I have a hard time getting others to understand my drive to write down all the stories swirling around in my brain. Living with a writer is hard. Part of me is unreachable, always standing away from people, observing. 

Q.  If you could not be author, what would you do/be?

A. I’d be telling stories verbally or scratching them out in the sand. There isn’t anything else I want to do. I’m a natural born storyteller.

Q.  What would the story of your life be entitled?

A. A Journey of Grit and Guts, of Love and Laughter.

Q.  What is your favorite book of all time?

A.  It’s a tie: “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen and “Dodsworth” by Sinclair Lewis. This is such a hard question. I’d have to leave out “Gone with the Wind” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Sense and Sensability”, “Main Street” and works by Flannery O’Connor and Edith Wharton.

Q.  Which character from ANY book are you most like?

A.  That’s a tough question. I don’t fashion my characters after real people, including myself. The closest I can come is that I’m a cross between Callie Caldwell from my Now and Forever series and Carrie Tucker from “The Marriage List” and “The Love List”.

Q.  What character from all of your books are you most like?

A. I think I have a little bit of every heroine in me somewhere. Determination, a loving heart, intelligence, warmth are all qualities of my heroines and, I hope, of me, as well.

Q.  What is your favorite season?

A. Summer! That’s easy. I love the lazy, warm days of summer and spend it in the country writing, breathing fresh air and taking photos of birds, flowers and trees. It’s the perfect time for shedding shoes and being close to nature.

Q.  What inspired your book cover(s)?  Or what is your favorite book cover and why?

A. I need to have pictures on the cover that resemble my characters in some way. I prefer not to have full faces but sometimes I do. I love pretty covers but also something different, hence my black, white and pink covers for the Now and Forever series. I’ve been blessed with help on my covers from Elaina Lee, Dawné Dominique, Beth Walker and Simon Smith-Wilson. I’ve done a couple of covers myself and find I enjoy creating a pretty cover. I don’t have a favorite but love them all for their unique qualities.

Q.  Tell me something funny that happened while on a book tour or while promoting your book.

A. I was invited to speak at a small book club group run by a friend of mine. While I was talking about the small town that is the inspiration for the town of Willow Falls in my Now and Forever series, a woman in the group asked me about the town, a small college town in Pennsylvania. She then told me she grew up there! She also informed me there is an even smaller town called Pine Grove Mills that I pass on the way. Pine Grove, of course, is the setting for my Moonlight books and is not taken from that town. But what a coincidence!

Q.  Are you working on something new?

A.  Yes. I’m writing the third book in my list series, “The Dating List”. Then I plan to dig right into “Now and Forever 4” and the third in the Moonlight series, “Under the Midnight Moon”.

Q.  Anything you want to say to followers of this blog or those that are just stopping by?

A.  Thank you to those who have bought and read my booksI hope my books intrigue you, pull you into their stories and make you feel the emotions my characters are feeling. Thank you for stopping by.