Layla had rebounded from her divorce to a workaholic businessman and started a new life in the Twin Cities, testing software for a small computer company. When she receives a threatening letter, she gives it to the authorities. But the letter was meant for Max Lerner, an uptight Suit from Tieland who places business first, Layla second.
Then Layla is kidnapped, and it isn't about business anymore. For Max, it's about the safety of this crazy woman he's fallen in love with. Max and his friends have to find Layla, shore up the merger, squash rumors of software piracy and find those responsible for this chaos-all in a matter of hours.
If they can accomplish all that, surely Max and Layla can find a way for an ex-hippy war protestor and a business-driven CEO to find a happy-ever-after-can't they?
Read an excerpt from If Not For You
Visit J.L. Wilson's web site
About J.L. Wilson
I was born in a small town in Iowa, and have traveled extensively, living in several different regions of the U.S. and briefly overseas. I've been writing most of my life and seriously writing, trying to be published, since 2004. In 2007 I had four books release, which made for quite a banner year for me! 2008 promises to be equally busy, with three books coming out (possibly four). So stay tuned for more from me!
Also by J.L. Wilson
Romantic Suspense/Mystery
Your Saving Grace, Cerridwen Press
Coming soon: I Know You're Out There Somewhere, Cerridwen Press
Brownies, Bodies, and Breaking the Code, in print from Amazon and Barnes & Noble, download from the Wild Rose Press
Coming soon: Candy, Corpses, and Classified Ads, Wild Rose Press
Coming soon: Autographs, Abductions, and A-List Authors, Wild Rose Press
Paranormal
Forgiveness, Cerridwen Press
An Interview with J.L. Wilson
By Holly Hewson, Marketing Director for The Romance Studio
HH: J.L. welcome back to TRS. Please tell us about your featured work, If Not For You. JL: I call this one "my businessman book" because it stars Max Lerner, a work-driven corporate CEO whose life gets turned upside down by a chance encounter with Layla Whitford … or is it a 'chance encounter?'
Max is involved in a merger that's crucial to the health of his company, Lerner Software. He's been getting letters that threaten to expose details of the merger that could completely foul the deal. Enter Layla - she gets a letter that's got Max's name on the envelope but her address. She doesn't even glance at the front of the letter. She just opens it and finds a threatening letter inside. She calls the police, who in turn call Max.
Max knows she got the letter on purpose. Her address is nothing like his so the question is: who wants them to get together and why? And when he meets her, he's even more puzzled. Layla is like a force of nature, an exuberant, independent and successful woman who's put her divorce long behind her and has gotten on with her life. She's not afraid to stand up for what she believes in (like the time she chained herself to a fence to stop the cutting of an old-growth forest) and she has no interest in a relationship with a man who is eerily like her ex-husband: focused on work to the exclusion of all else.
During the course of the book they discover that unbelievable as it might seem, they do have something in common. And that something might just get Layla killed if Max can't solve the mystery.
HH: Where did you get the idea for this story of a former war protester and a staunch businessman? JL: This came from a workshop I attended. We had a brainstorming session and the moderator asked us to come up with the most improbable pairings we could imagine and then figure out how they could become romantically involved. The people at my table came up with some doozies: a missionary paired with a gigolo, a rancher paired with an environmentalist, etc.
That got me thinking: I'd always wanted to do a 'businessman' book. What would be his opposite? That's when I came up with Layla, a woman near and dear to my heart. Like her, I was a war protestor (Viet Nam era) and like her, I've done some things that put me in danger (not as extreme as going after whale hunters in a boat, but a few things that had my heart racing). I threw them together and came up with a plot twist that I think is unique.
HH: What did you like best about Max Lerner? JL: Max isn't dumb and he's not arrogant. He's opinionated and self-confident, but he'll take advice from people (even his mother) if he respects their judgment and trusts them. Max has worked hard to get where he is in the world, and he's not going to let anything stop him. But if someone is put into danger, he'll put his company and his life at risk in order to help them.
When Layla is threatened he doesn't hesitate to accede to the blackmailers' demands. He'll do whatever it takes to keep her safe even if it means losing his company. He's learned that some things are more important than business success and even if he thinks that he and Layla can't make a life together, he'll see to it she's safe.
HH: What do you enjoy about writing romantic suspense? JL: I like the plot twists and turns. It's fun to figure "how dunnit" as well as "who dunnit". For example, in Your Saving Grace, my previous Cerridwen release, I had to make sure the hero and heroine were separated at a key point in the story. How to do that believably? In order to accomplish that, I had to work on the hero's back story and give him a reason to walk away from her at the critical time. I think it worked … it must have, since the book is up for an EPPIE award (fingers crossed).
Romantic suspense lets me focus on making my characters grow through stress, and that's when true personality is really revealed. That's fun.
HH: What are you working on now? JL: I just finished the third book in the History Patrol series, set in 1934 and I'm working on another first-person mystery in which someone is murdered in a greenhouse. Oh, and Viagra email SPAM will be a major clue in this book.
I'm gearing up to start the fourth book in the History Patrol series, this one set in 1968. After that I have plans to work on another RS book featuring some of the characters from my upcoming release in 2008 (see below).
HH: What do you have in store for readers in 2008? JL: I'll have a new book out in the History Patrol series in 2008. Endurance is a first-person book set in the present but with ties to the past and the future. I'm hoping we'll have a fall release for that book.
I'll have another RS book coming out with Cerridwen. I Know You're Out There Somewhere is about a man who reappears in a woman's life twenty years after he almost killed her and escaped punishment for the crime. She can't convince anyone that she's in danger until she meets a retired Sheriff and he decides to help her.
And I've got two first-person mysteries coming out. Candy, Corpses, and Classified Ads is about a woman whose ex-husband turns up as a corpse under the rose bushes in her yard, dug up by a marauding pig. The cop who investigates the murder is the man who jilted her twenty years previously. Mayhem ensures.
Then I've got Autographs, Abductions, and A-List Authors, coming out later in the year. It's about an up-and-coming author (ahem) who attends a writer's conference and witnesses the death of a famous author during a book signing. The heroine, who writes mystery novels, is briefly a suspect but is definitely 'a person of interest' to the police detective investigating the case. If you've ever been to a writer's conference, you'll sympathize with our heroine.
HH: Where and when do you do your best writing? JL: I work a 40+-hour a week job, so I have to squeeze my 'fun writing' in where I can. I'm always ready to write - I carry a 'project notebook' with me that's jammed full of plot ideas, pictures, diagrams, etc. So if I get an idea, I can jot it down.
I go to my day job early and leave early so I'm usually sitting at my computer by 5 or 6 at night, and can write for 2 or 3 hours. I often spend weekends doing at least 3 or 4 hours of writing, and also some promotion work (like this interview :).
My best Thinking, though, comes when I'm at the gym. Any time I need to wrestle with a plot point, I go hop on the treadmill or do a few laps in the pool. I even bought waterproof paper and pens so I can jot down ideas when I get out. I've come up with some great scenes while lifting weights or running laps.
HH: What do you do when you get stuck on a story? JL: I seldom get stuck because I don't start writing a book until I have a good idea of the book in my head. I never totally outline the plot, but I will have a sense of the characters, setting, season, place, and general hook (who died and why, usually).
If I do get stalled, I'll switch to another book. I always have two in progress, usually totally different than each other. So if I get stalled in an RS book, I'll switch to one of my paranormals and chip away at it for a day or two. Then I'll switch back to the original book.
I almost always write a book from start to finish in one pass (that is, one chunk of time). It takes me about 3 months for a good first draft of a book then I'll move on to another book and let the first book vanish completely from my mind. A month later I'll go back and look through it, checking for inconsistencies, etc. Then I'll send it to my critique partner and let her have at it before I send it on to an editor.
HH: What would you most like to accomplish in 2008? JL: I'd like to find a home for my paranormal series and some of my other RS books. I think the paranormal series has real potential, and I'm hoping to find a publisher for it. It might get a bit tricky juggling four different genres (mystery, RS, time travel, and paranormal) but it might fun, too.
HH: What would you most like readers to know about you? JL: I write books about real people, folks like you and me who get tossed into odd situations. I'd like people to identify with my heroines (and my heroes) who often have insecurities about their attractiveness to the opposite sex.
And I want people to laugh now and again when they read my books. There's always a bright spot in each book, a point where a reader will (hopefully) laugh out loud, even in my suspense books.
I'm writing because I love to write and I hope that comes through in my characters and my plots.
HH: Thank you!
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