Welcome, J.E., It’s great to have you here today. I have found that readers like knowing a bit about their favorite authors, at least as a reader I do, so let’s jump right in. Are you a Valentine's Day lover or cynic?
JET: I would classify myself more on the cynic side. It’s a great holiday for young love but once you’ve been married twenty some years, it just doesn’t make sense to go all gaga over the holiday. I’d much rather have my husband fawn all over me on my birthday, or Christmas.
I agree. Valentine’s Day is often for young love. After almost 25 years, I find that I prefer snuggling at home than going out for a public display of how we feel. So, now that you’ve cleared up the Valentine mystery, how would you define yourself in five words or less?
JET: Me or my writing? I’d define most of my writing as dark, heart-pumping, page-turning and twisted.
Defining me – I’m a short dynamo with a twisted sense of humor.
Funny. So little dynamo, what was the craziest thing you have ever done?
JET: Gosh, so many things come to mind. I was a wild child in high school, but I won’t go there.
I did drive from Provincetown, Mass (the absolute tip of Cape Cod) to New Britain, Connecticut in just under two hours which is half the time it normally takes. Yeah – I was driving right around 100 mph the entire way. This gives tribute to the reason I was “on-call” for the news team at the television station I worked for at the time. I still drive fast, but not like I used to.
The craziest thing I did in the name of research was to learn to shoot a gun. I did that for my mainstream thriller series starring FBI special agent Steve Williams.
Wow, I have never done anything that wild. I speed but not quite that much. Besides the desire to go to great lengths for research, what was you impetus to start writing?
JET: I started writing in sixth grade and after I got married, I put it aside and hadn’t penned a story in twenty years when my daughter asked if I could do anything what would it be. Well, that was simple – write a book and get it published. That was in February of 2007 and since then, I’ve done exactly that. Five times over.
Congrats. Since your first release in July of 2010, what has changed in your world?
JET: I’m still working full time at a pretty demanding day job, and I come home, get the kids their dinners and cart them to their activities. I read e-zine submissions and format novels for my publisher, I blog and peruse facebook, twitter and Goodreads and in my spare time I write and edit my own work. If anything, it’s gotten a bit crazier.
I understand fully. You don’t have much time to write apparently, yet thriller fiction seems like a difficult genre. Why erotic thrillers rather than an easier line?
JET: Thriller and horror ride the same vein and I’ve always been drawn to those types of books and my writing is definitely influenced by my reading. I thoroughly enjoy writing the dark side and Stephen King is my ultimate idol. I love to be scared or on edge when I’m reading or watching a movie. That adrenaline rush is a hoot and I love crafting that into a story that folks can’t put down.
SURVIVAL GAMES was the first book I actually finished. I has started umpteen books in high school and college but never finished them and when I was given the go ahead by my family – I decided to write the book that haunted my dreams for at least a decade and it flowed like a geyser. That was by far my darkest book. From there I took my surviving characters and fast-forwarded five years and threw further paranormal complications into their lives in MIND GAMES. But that wasn’t the end of the story. END GAME, which comes out this weekend, is the last of the series where I intersect the three survivors again, along with one nasty bitch and one of them will not walk out of the situation alive.
What makes your latest hero and heroine hot?
JET: Chris Ryan (a.k.a. Ty Aris) is a bad boy with a very dark past and whether we admit it or not, it’s the bad boy that’s always a turn on and this man knows as much about computers as he does around the bedroom.
In my mainstream series, my hero is Special Agent Steve Williams. He is the polar opposite of Ty, a sexy white knight masked in the form of a brilliant young FBI agent.
Sounds like a little something for everyone. If you could have written any piece of fiction or nonfiction in history what would it have been?
JET: The Stand because it’s an exceptional piece of literature – a brilliant look at post apocalyptic society along with a healthy dose of the supernatural intertwined.
What’s coming down the road?
JET: My next novel, HUNTING SEASON, intertwines the characters from the Games Series with my FBI series. The best way to described it is a cross-breeding of Criminal Minds and Supernatural. I had a great deal of fun writing this one and I’ve gotten some great pre-release reviews of this one. It will hit the shelves on Friday, May 13, 2011.
When Kyle Winslow escapes from custody and targets everyone Special Agent Steve Williams cares about, a turn of fate brings Steve face to face with Ty Aris – a criminal mastermind topping the FBI’s most wanted list.
Torn between justice and vengeance, Steve must make a decision.
Join alliances with Ty, or arrest him and lose his best chance to catch the bastard who destroyed his family.
Do you have a blurb or an excerpt to tease?
JET: I’d like to leave your readers with an excerpt from END GAME
EXCERPT:
Just like their last days in the complex, Chris could hear the ticking in the back of his head, the sands of time running out. Tense didn’t begin to describe his mood over the next two days. Every ring of the doorbell, every strange car, every ring of the studio buzzer grated on his nerves to the point he wouldn’t let her out of his sight except when he conducted his karate classes and even then, every second he couldn’t see her put him on edge.
Two days had come and gone since Tom’s call and he stood in the office waiting for Jessica to switch into her sweats. The closed sign now hung on the front door and he inhaled, his eyes passing over the sleeping boys and back to the bathroom door.
Tomorrow night we’ll be in New York.
“Chris, you need to relax,” Jessica said as she stepped out of the bathroom.
He sent her a strained smile and leaned over to pick up the boys. Before he could gather them in his arms, the door buzzer rang. Adrenaline rushed through his veins and he exchanged a glance with Jessica.
“Stay here,” he whispered the command, scanning the thoughts of the intruder in their lobby. It wasn’t a student and he turned, putting a disarming smile on his face and stepped in full view of the stranger. “I’m sorry, but we’re closed.”
The first in a long line of assassins stood with a gun pointing at him, expecting his demeanor to change, expecting him to crumble under the threat of bodily injury. It was laughable, especially given the hell he endured at the hands of his step-brother and he chuckled. “You don’t want to even think about that dude.”
“Black belt versus a gun, I’ll take my chances.” The intruder smiled, his finger tightening on the trigger.
Great. Where can readers find out more about you or get in touch?
JET: Besides the links for facebook, Twitter and Goodreads above, folks can find out more about me and my books at my website:
www.JETaylor75.com and my blog: http://JETaylor75.blogspot.com
Thank you for having me on your blog Becca!
Thank you for coming. It was nice to get to know a bit more about you. For those readers who would like to know more, J. E. was kind enough to include a brief bio. Be sure to leave her a note so she knows who stopped by.
J.E. Taylor is a writer, an editor, a manuscript formatter, a mother, a wife and a business analyst, not necessarily in that order.
She first sat down to seriously write in February of 2007 after her daughter asked:
“Mom, if you could do anything, what would you do?”
From that moment on, she hasn’t looked back and now her writing resume includes five+ novels either published or targeted for release along with several short stories on the virtual shelves including a few within upcoming eXcessica anthologies.
Ms. Taylor also moonlights as an Assistant Editor of Allegory, an online venue for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, and lends a hand in formatting manuscripts for eXcessica as well as offering her services judging writing contests for various RWA chapters.
She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children and during the summer months enjoys her weekends on the shore in southern Maine.
