ABOUT THAT NIGHT: 5 Fun Facts with Julie James
I met Julie James at an RWA conference a couple of years ago, and she’s such a gracious, easy-going person. I’m so happy for her tremendous success. Every time I read about Julie, the words are always good, and the praise is well-deserved. The romance community so needed Julie James when she arrived. I remember people saying contemporaries weren’t being given the attention they deserve, and Julie helped change that. With her amazing stories of really smart, modern women and their sexy counterparts, Julie gave a boost to the world of contemporary romance that it needed, putting it in the spotlight again when her excerpts started showing up in magazines like Cosmopolitan.
Quite simply, romance readers can’t get enough of Julie James.
You’ll love her, too, wonderful readers. Julie’s Five Fun Facts are awesome, and her excerpt will leave you wanting more! So be sure to leave a comment, and let’s have a wonderful week celebrating About That Night with Julie James!
About That Night
FBI/US Attorney
Book 3
Berkley
April 3, 2012
HE’S PLAYING GAMES.
Though Rylann Pierce tried to fight the sparks she felt for billionaire heir Kyle Rhodes the night they met, their sizzling chemistry was undeniable. But after being stood up on their first date, Rylann never expected to see him again. So when she finds herself face-to-face with Kyle in a courthouse nine years later, she’s stunned. More troubling to the beautiful assistant U.S. attorney is that she’s still wildly attracted to him.
BUT SHE’S MAKING THE RULES.
Just released from prison, Kyle Rhodes isn’t thrilled to be the star witness in a high-profile criminal case—but when Rylann comes knocking at his door, he finds she may be the one lawyer he can’t say no to. Still as gorgeous and sharp-tongued as ever, she lays down the law: she doesn’t mix business with pleasure. But Kyle won’t give up on something he wants—and what he wants is the one woman he’s never forgotten. . .
5 Fun Facts About ABOUT THAT NIGHT:
1. The hero of the book, Kyle Rhodes, is a billionaire ex-con and, yep, he actually committed the crime. He’s a computer genius whose nickname is the “Twitter Terrorist” because he hacked into Twitter and shut down the site for forty-eight hours after his supermodel ex-girlfriend broke up with him via a tweet and posted a video of her cheating on him with a Hollywood actor. (Bonus fun fact: the Hollywood actor she cheats with is the “villain” character in my first book, Just the Sexiest Man Alive.)
2. Kyle first appears in A Lot Like Love, in which his sister, Jordan, agrees to work with the FBI in exchange for Kyle’s early release from federal prison. In the very early stages of outlining A Lot Like Love, I’d thought Kyle would be younger than Jordan, maybe 20 years old, and that he’d be socially awkward, sort of a stereotypical “computer geek,” who was getting bullied in prison. But then I thought, “Why stereotype?” So instead I made Kyle older (in his 30′s), and Jordan’s twin brother, and I also made him, well, hot.
The problem, however, was that all of Kyle’s scenes in A Lot Like Love were told through his sister’s point of view–and she’s certainly not going to think or say, “My brother is so hot.” In fact, she refers to Kyle as a “computer geek” numerous times in the book. So to cue the readers that, hey, this is a hot computer geek, I had the other prisoners and prison guards give Kyle the nickname “Sawyer” because of his striking resemblance to Josh Holloway’s character on the TV show Lost. (And, really, didn’t we all love Sawyer on that show?)
photo credit: IMDB
3. The song that got stuck in my head while writing the book was Teenage Dream by Katy Perry. I think that’s because Kyle and the heroine of the book, Rylann, first meet when they’re in grad school (not exactly teenagers, but still) and they share this great kiss on graduation night. But then circumstances separate them for nine years. When they meet again, she’s an Assistant U.S. Attorney and he’s a convicted felon–not exactly a match made in heaven–but they both have never forgotten that night (or the kiss) and the attraction to each other is still there, simmering big-time underneath the surface.
4. Several scenes in the book take place on the University of Illinois campus in Champaign-Urbana, where I went to school for seven years (undergrad and law school). The bar where the hero and heroine meet is one where Mr. James and I hung out often with our law school friends.
5. At one point in the book, the heroine tells the hero that she’s going to see the Hunger Games movie with a friend. I needed a movie that came out in the spring of 2012, so I figured I might as well use that one since I’m a big fan of the Hunger Games trilogy.
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After graduating from law school, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Julie James clerked for the United States Court of Appeals in Jacksonville, Florida. She then practiced law with one of the nation’s largest firms for several years until she began writing screenplays. After Hollywood producers optioned two of her scripts, she decided to leave the practice of law to write full-time.
In 2011, Julie was named “Romance’s New It Girl” by RT Book Reviews magazine and listed on the American Library Association’s Reading List for Top Genre Novels. She is the author of a Booklist Top 10 Romance of the Year and one of Cosmopolitan magazine’s Red Hot Reads. Julie’s novels also were chosen as the Best Contemporary Romances in the 2011 and 2012 All About Romance Readers’ Poll. Her books have been translated into thirteen languages and Julie’s most recent novel, ABOUT THAT NIGHT, is now available.
Julie James lives with her husband and two children in Chicago, where she is currently working on her next novel.
Connect with Julie:
Author Site | Facebook | Twitter
