Writer’s Desk with Jaime Jo Wright
Tricia Goyer
Writer’s Desk with Jaime Jo WrightJaime Jo Wright, multi-award-winning author—including the Christy and Daphne du Maurier awards—is a coffee-fueled and cat-fancier extraordinaire. She has entwined her life with the legendary Captain Hook, residing serenely in Wisconsin’s rural woodlands. Her literary vocation involves penning chilling Gothic tales with a strong preference to the master of dark, Edgar Allan Poe.
Visit her at: http://www.jaimewrightbooks.com and listen to her podcast MadLit Musings on your favorite podcast player or at http://www.madlitmusings.com
More about Tempest at Annabel’s LighthouseWhere the lighthouse no longer illuminates, ghostly lore and legends emerge . . .
1874
A battered woman awakens atop a forgotten gravesite by Lake Superior’s southern shore. Identified only by the locket around her neck inscribed with the name Rebecca, she seeks refuge with an elderly lighthouse keeper. But as Rebecca struggles to remember who she is, she finds herself haunted by the lingering memories of Annabel, a mysterious woman who perished in the lake’s unforgiving waves years earlier. With the spirit of Annabel seemingly reawakened, and an unknown adversary on the hunt to silence Rebecca once and for all, more is at stake than reclaiming her own memories. Rebecca must reclaim Annabel’s as well.
Present Day
Author and researcher Shea Radclyffe escapes to the lighthouse outside a historic Michigan mining town to seek clarity about her failing marriage. Instantly drawn to the lighthouse’s landlord, Shea contends with the legend of Annabel’s vengeful ghost and a superstitious community that has buried the truth about a current murder. As the secrets harbored around Annabel’s lighthouse unravel, Shea must navigate a fight between torn loyalty, self-discovery, and the haunting forces of love.
. . . demanding vengeance for secrets that should have drowned a century before.
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*Due to shipping prices, giveaway open to US addresses only*Q&A with Jaime Jo WrightARCF: Can you share a bit about what led you to write in the gothic/suspense genre?
JJW: Yeah, so I was a fraidy-cat growing up. No joke. Even the lead-in intro to PBS’s Masterpiece Theater scared me. I was also a bleeding heart. If you ever see references to my love for antelope, that’s because my parents had to ban me from watching—you guessed it—nature shows. I was an emotional wreck at the end when all the antelope were murdered by lions. So that was my beginning. Fast forward to the day I picked up Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables and I learned how intoxicating creepy could be. The key word is “creepy” versus “gory”. I often get misaligned as a horror author or a Ted Dekker, but I’m really not. I’m more like an Edgar A. Poe with creepy, macabre feel—or a Daphne du Maurier. But then my books also take on a life of their own, with some Scooby Doo elements (ghosts are always explained) and nods to just good old fashioned suspense. Am I still afraid of much? Nope. I’ve actually become remarkably unafraid, and love walks in the dark, ghost stories, crime TV, and I even like IT the movies. So there’s that. Oh, and I still weep for the antelope,
ARCF: How do you balance writing between historical, suspenseful, and present-day elements? What challenges do you face in blending the two?
JJW: Well, I read a lot of both of those time periods. If you’re an AVID reader (see what I did there?) you’ll recognize that the vernacular and tone of writing style changes between a good historical and a good contemporary. So I try to really capture that voice when I switch back and forth so it takes you into a different century. Mostly though, I find the biggest challenge to make each time period equally as vital and intriguing. I’m not a fan of split-time novels where you can read one time period and completely skip the other and still have a full story. I also want both stories and characters to be equally compelling and desirable to read.
ARCF: What does your typical writing routine look like?
JJW: What routine? LOL! I have the attention span of a honeybee finding pollen and the schedule of a serial killer looking for his next victim. (That was morbid. I’ll try to think up a different analogy). I’ve learned to write fast, write hard, and write whenever and wherever. Yes. I HAVE written in a boat, a camper, a church service (shh), and at a zoo.
ARCF: How do you deal with writer’s block or moments of creative doubt?
JJW: I plow through it. Seriously. I mean, when you have a deadline, you literally don’t have a choice. But it’s not uncommon for me to just stop the scene or chapter where I’m blocked and start the next one. Seriously. Want to write a good cliffhanger? Stop a scene when you get stuck and it’s suddenly like … woah. That’s incomplete and perfectly chilling.
ARCF: Can you share a little of the inspiration behind Tempest at Annabel’s Lighthouse and what readers can expect from the story?
JJW: For sure! So I adore the UP of Michigan (that’s Upper Peninsula of Michigan 
). I grew up spending hours on the shores of Lake Superior, studying the Indigenous legends around it, and lighthouse hunting. I always wanted to write a haunted lighthouse story, so of course there is that, and the story itself is inspired by “Annabel Lee”, Edgar Allan Poe’s infamous tale of heartbreak and woe. I explore the theme of love in this book and all the ways it can be misused as well as be a blessing.
ARCF: How does the setting of the lighthouse influence the tone and atmosphere of the book?
JJW: The lighthouse is essentially a character in and of itself. It hides all the stories of everyone whose lived in its beam for the last century. Picture the lighthouse as the keeper of secrets and not just the beacon that brings you home.
ARCF: If you were to cast Tempest at Annabel’s Lighthouse for a movie, who would your dream cast be?
JJW: Well, because I write split-time, I have a hero and heroine in the present and then a hero and heroine in the past. SO! The present couple would be Adria Arjona cast as “Shea” and Garrett Hedlund as “Pete”. Abigail Cowen would play “Rebecca” and Michiel Huisman would play “Abel”.
ARCF: What challenges did you face while writing Tempest at Annabel’s Lighthouse, and how did you overcome them?
JJW: Time. Time was my biggest challenge. There has been a lot going on in my personal life since 2021. When I lost my day job and my mom died within 3 months of each other, that was pretty much the first domino to fall. My dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and that began another rough journey that I’m still walking. So that phrase, “best laid plans”? Yeah. It’s true. They always go awry. I ended up writing Tempest in a month. Not recommended and my editors were absolute ANGELS to put up with a messier manuscript.
ARCF: What do you hope readers take away from Tempest at Annabel’s Lighthouse after they’ve turned the final page?
JJW: I hope readers take away the brutal truth of love. Really. I mean, Tempest is a broken love story inspired by Edgar A. Poe’s Annabel Lee. There are so many forms of truly broken love. Obsessive love. Self-centered love. Possessive love. Unspoken love. Imagined love. Fairy-tale love. These are all the forms of love that are thoroughly destructive, abusive, misleading, and idyllic that simply break relationships. And we live in a culture where elements of these forms are actually celebrated and even encouraged (insert “self-love” or “self-care” here). I wanted to write a story where the ideal form of love, as modeled by Christ, was sacrificial love. This is the kind where the word “self” simply does not exist. At all. “Greater love has no man than this, than he lay down his life for a friend”. It’s the unbreakable sort of love. I wanted to show that, and I hope it challenges how people view their relationships. Especially their romantic relationships—marriage or other—because while we love a good romance story, in the end, there’s romance that we overlook hidden in the form of loyalty, steadfastness, faithfulness, and sincerity. So yes. That’s my short answer. Now for the long one . . . just kidding.
ARFC: And finally, what’s coming up next for you?
JJW: A LOT! So this year (2025) readers can expect to see TWO summer releases from me. One is part of a summer thriller reads anthology with three other authors (all separate novels). Mine will be my first psychological thriller told in 1st person, titled, The Ones I Left To Die. Then in July, my first Love Inspired Suspense is releasing (and available for preorder now) titled, Buried Wilderness Secrets. And then! (Deep breath) This October my next Gothic mystery releases, and that one is loosely based on a 19th century cold case and it’s titled The Bell Tolls at Traeger Hall. AND THEN! 2026 April will bring you the next Gothic mystery, which just released its new title: The Bookshop of 99 Doors.
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