Ask the Author: Jane Haseldine
Answered Questions (8)
Jane Haseldine
Hello, Abbey! Thank you so much for taking time to drop me a message! I so appreciate it and your thoughtful words about the story. I hope you like Duplicity. I love to read mysteries and thrillers, so I was really pleased to hear that you enjoyed reading my first book!
Jane Haseldine
Hi, Sandra! Thank you so much for reaching out and for the kind words! Great, insightful question. In the first book, I knew I wanted to make Julia a strong, yet flawed, character. She’s tough, sure. Paranoid. Definitely. She takes over-protective mom to a new level over the safety of her children based on what happened to her brother, Ben, when they were kids. In thinking about the plot, I wondered how Julia would cope if she had to face down her biggest fear once again. Would she lose it, or would she be able to overcome her guilt and insecurity and use her investigative reporting skills to beat back the monster who took her child? In Duplicity, I wanted Julia to find more of her center. She takes two steps forward, but then, I wondered, as a person who is driven to find out the truth, how would she deal with uncovering something that might be too much to bear? In Worth Killing For, I like exploring messy family situations. In this book, I wanted Julia to continue to create a stable life for herself and her children, but then I threw a whammy in the mix with the return of her conman father who abandoned her as a little girl, and she has no choice but to work with her most unlikely allies, the two people she probably trusts least of anyone in the world, her dad, Duke, and her sister, Sarah, a former con herself, in order to try and solve Ben’s cold case. For this book I wanted the characters to have a chance for redemption and healing, and the possibility for Julia to be able to move forward in the process. More Julia adventures are on deck! The fourth book in the series, You Fit the Pattern, will be out in April 2019. Thank you, Sandra, and Happy New Year!
Jane Haseldine
Hi Paula,
Thank you for your question, and I’m so glad to hear that you are enjoying reading Duplicity!
Great editorial catches on your end! You have an early, uncorrected proof of the book, an advanced reader copy, so there can be uncaught typos in there. Hopefully, every error will be picked up by the time the final version of the book comes out on March 28, 2017. But thank you for bringing this to my attention. As an author, any errors in my work make me cringe (when I send my manuscripts to my editor, I always have a horrible fear that I’ve made some kind of glaring error!), but luckily, there are many sets of eyes on my work to save me from myself!
Thank you again for your message. Happy New Year and happy reading!
Jane
Thank you for your question, and I’m so glad to hear that you are enjoying reading Duplicity!
Great editorial catches on your end! You have an early, uncorrected proof of the book, an advanced reader copy, so there can be uncaught typos in there. Hopefully, every error will be picked up by the time the final version of the book comes out on March 28, 2017. But thank you for bringing this to my attention. As an author, any errors in my work make me cringe (when I send my manuscripts to my editor, I always have a horrible fear that I’ve made some kind of glaring error!), but luckily, there are many sets of eyes on my work to save me from myself!
Thank you again for your message. Happy New Year and happy reading!
Jane
Jane Haseldine
Hi Brooke,
Thank you for the question! Right now, I'm working on the third book in the Julia Gooden series, Blood Blackbird. In this story, Julia has no choice but to team up with her con man father, who abandoned her as a little girl, so she can decipher whether a stranger vowing he's the brother she lost thirty years earlier in a child abduction case is who he claims to be, or if it's a trap to ensure the many sins of her father's past will be paid in full this time. In this book, the missing person's case of Julia's brother is finally solved.
I'm really enjoying writing it, and I'm almost done, but it's crunch time now! My deadline to turn it into my my editor is in three weeks. Last week, my husband and I took our two little boys on a previously scheduled summer vacation, and while my family was at the pool and the beach, I was in the hotel room, huddled in front of my computer, writing. All in all, a good problem to have though!
Keeping my fingers crossed that readers are going to like it. The second book in the Julia Gooden series, Duplicity, comes out in April 2017, and Blood Blackbird should be out sometimes later that year.
Hope you are reading some good books right now!
Jane
Thank you for the question! Right now, I'm working on the third book in the Julia Gooden series, Blood Blackbird. In this story, Julia has no choice but to team up with her con man father, who abandoned her as a little girl, so she can decipher whether a stranger vowing he's the brother she lost thirty years earlier in a child abduction case is who he claims to be, or if it's a trap to ensure the many sins of her father's past will be paid in full this time. In this book, the missing person's case of Julia's brother is finally solved.
I'm really enjoying writing it, and I'm almost done, but it's crunch time now! My deadline to turn it into my my editor is in three weeks. Last week, my husband and I took our two little boys on a previously scheduled summer vacation, and while my family was at the pool and the beach, I was in the hotel room, huddled in front of my computer, writing. All in all, a good problem to have though!
Keeping my fingers crossed that readers are going to like it. The second book in the Julia Gooden series, Duplicity, comes out in April 2017, and Blood Blackbird should be out sometimes later that year.
Hope you are reading some good books right now!
Jane
Jane Haseldine
I'm wrapping up the third book in the Julia Gooden series (working title, Blood Blackbird) for release sometime in 2018. Look for the second Julia Gooden mystery, Duplicity, in April 2017.
Jane Haseldine
Keep at it! And don't let anyone tell you that you can't. And rejection (which can seem like a living, breathing thing that is constantly ringing your doorbell), don't let it cripple you. If you can be objective, which is often pretty hard to do, consider that maybe the criticism is warranted. The best advice I ever got was from a literary agent who rejected me after she raved about my partial manuscript, but ultimately rejected my full. She'll likely never know it, but I owe her insight for finally landing an agent and getting a book deal.
Jane Haseldine
I think writers write because they have no other choice. You do it because you love it. Period. Exclamation Point. I think most writers aren't in it for perceived fame and fortune, which likely won't come. For me, writing is the only thing I do when I don't realize time is passing, because I'm so wrapped up in the story.
Jane Haseldine
I power through it. Even if I'm unhappy with what I've written or I am stuck on a scene or certain chapter, I know I can always go back and revise. In my last manuscript, I skipped ahead and wrote two chapters out of sequence (I had never tried that before), and then went back to work on the section that was causing me a major brain freeze. I usually remind myself that as a former newspaper reporter, I had to fight myself out of any kind of writer's block, otherwise I'd be out of a job pretty quickly.
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