On the road to publication, Jackie took a few detours, including a stint in academia (she holds an MA in Classics from the University of Chicago and was a recipient of a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities) and many years as a technical writer/instructional designer for a data processing company. She still holds her day job, but her true vocation has always been writing fiction and romance in particular.
Jackie is a firm believer that love is the most powerful force in the world, which that makes romance the most powerful genre in the world. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise!
WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: http://www.jackiebarbosa.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/jackiebarbosa
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JackieBarbosaAuthor/
About the Book
After almost twenty-five years in His Majesty’s service, Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Langston never expected to wake up in heaven, much less being tended by an angel. But when he regains consciousness in the presence of a beautiful, dark-haired woman and with no memory of how he came to be there, what else can he think? Except it’s rather odd for an angel to have an American accent.
As the long-widowed Laura nurses the wounded Geoffrey back to health, the attraction between them heats from a simmer to a boil. Bound by his oath to the British crown, Geoffrey should be working to find his way back to his regiment and from the, to England. Instead, he’s sleeping with the enemy…and thereby committing the crime of desertion if not treason. But then, who’s going to find out?
If only Geoffrey didn’t have a family back home who refuse to take “missing in action” for an answer.
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Can you tell us what your new book is about?
Sleeping with the
Enemy is a Regency-era romance set around the end of the War of 1812. The
heroine is Laura Farnsworth, an American widow who runs her family’s apple
orchard and cider business near the town of Plattsburgh,
New York. The hero, Geoffrey
Langston, is an officer who has spent his entire adult life in the British
Army. In the opening chapter of the book, Laura finds what she believes is the
body of a British officer on the side of the road, but quickly discovers he is
alive but seriously injured. She resolves to help him and thus begins the
romance. There are, of course, plenty of obstacles for lovers who belong to
opposing sides of a war!
Can you tell us a little about your main and supporting
characters?
One of my favorite things about this book is that both the
protagonists are somewhat older than in the typical romance. Laura is 38, has a
seventeen-year-old son, and has been widowed for about a decade. Geoffrey is
the second son of a British viscount who was raised with the understanding that
he would join the military and when the book opens, he’s 44 years old and has
spent almost twenty-five years in the army. I really enjoyed writing a book
where the main characters had a lot of personal history to bring with them.
This book is also the fourth and final installment in the Lords of Lancashire series. Each of
Geoffrey’s siblings (two brothers and a sister) have their own stories,
although one of those books, Taking
Liberties, is technically not part of this series. Most of Sleeping with the Enemy takes place
eight years after the end of the previous story, A Matter of Indiscretion. This gave me a fun opportunity to revisit
the characters from all the earlier books and show them and their children on
the page. Of those characters, my favorite is Walter, the vicar hero of Hot Under the Collar. He’s just so
steady and compassionate and clever, and I enjoyed being able to write about
him again. So much so, in fact, that my next project is a Christmas-themed bonus
epilogue to Hot Under the Collar. I
expect to release that short story in October and all my newsletter subscribers
will be entitled to a free a copy. You can sign up for my newsletter here:
http://www.jackiebarbosa.com/newsletter.
Your book is set in Plattsburgh,
New York and later in London,
England. Can you tell us why you chose this location
in particular?
When I came up with the idea for this story, I knew that I
needed it to be set near the end of the War of 1812. I didn’t want my main
characters to have to deal with getting married when a war between their
nations was going to continue for several more years. The Battle of Plattsburgh
was the penultimate in the war and a stunning victory for the American army,
which was heavily outmanned and outgunned. This confluence of location and
events provided me with the setup for the romance and the larger plot.
How long did it take you to write your book?
{Laughs} I got the idea for the story shortly after I
finished writing A Matter of Indiscretion
(which I originally thought would be the last in the series), and that was
back in August of 2018. So it you start counting from there, it took 2 years.
That said, I wasn’t working on this book non-stop from then until finishing it
this summer. I wrote a one novel and a novella (both contemporary romances) and
also did a fair amount of not getting any writing done at all during that time.
One of my worst flaws as a writer is that I am great at coming up with story ideas and
also pretty good at starting them. What I’m terrible
at is sticking with the story all the way to the end. In the case of Enemy, I wrote about 15,000 words in
early 2019 but then set it aside because other new, shiny ideas seemed like
more fun and it was getting hard. But
I picked it back up in February of 2020, reread what I had written, and
everything just seemed to start clicking. From that point on, it took me about
four months to finish.
What has been the most pivotal point of your writing life?
The most pivotal point in my writing life also the most
pivotal point in my life, period: the death of my oldest son in March of 2014.
He was 16 at the time and got into a head-on collision with another car on the
way to school one morning. Julian and I were as much best friends as mother and
son and after he died, I really didn’t believe I’d ever write another book.
Moreover, if I did, I figured there was no way it would be a romance. After
what happened to me and my family, how could I believe in happily ever afters?
I can’t say exactly how or why I got past that, but there
was a turning point in early 2018 and I suddenly found myself wanting to write
again. And to my surprise, what I most wanted to write was romance and happily
ever afters. In the final analysis, I suppose I’ve come to realize that love is
the most powerful force in the universe and that makes it the most important
thing to write about.
What kind of advice would you give other romance authors?
There are only two rules in the romance genre as far as I’m
concerned. 1. The central plot must revolve around a romantic relationship. 2.
The story needs to end with a happily-ever-after (HEA) or at least a
happy-for-now (HFN). If you don’t follow those rules, it’s not genre romance.
But if you do follow those rules, feel free to stretch your imagination to its
limits and most of all, have fun!