An Interview with Author Joy Smith

JF: Welcome Joy!!  Tell us a little about GREEN FIRE.

JS: Thanks for inviting me today, Jennifer, and allowing me to share my writing experiences. My romantic suspense, GREEN FIRE, is due for release February 2013, so I hope all your readers will put it on their must-read list. I had a lot of fun writing Victor, a high end gigolo who is losing business to younger men. After receiving a phone call from a man claiming to be his brother, he flies to Colombia, South America with plans to find a more profitable career in the emerald market while he verifies the relationship. There, he gets tangled in his brother’s web of deceit, which becomes a problem because he has fallen in love with a pure and honest woman (Marisol) who appears numb to his charisma.

JF: What inspired you to write it?

JS: During the course of researching Colombia, South America for another story, I was fascinated by the fact that the finest emeralds in the world are mined in Bogata. I mean, what woman doesn’t like emeralds? With further research, I found a news story about drugs being smuggled out of Colombia packed in flower crates. (Flowers are a prime export of Colombia). Voila! A story set at a flower plantation in Bogata, Colombia involving emerald smuggling.

JF: If you could cast GREEN FIRE, who would play your hero and heroine and why?

JS: Jennifer, you know I hate this question because it will date me, but I’ll give it a shot. I’d say Hugh Grant with a sun tan as Victor because he could pull off being a pompous ass turned nice guy. Penelope Cruise kind of fits the description of my heroine, Marisol, and has enough talent to play a strong, very moral woman.

JF: Tell us about the Publishing process, once GREEN FIRE was sold.

JS: Muse It Up is an e-book to eventual print publisher out of Canada. After a welcome note from the publisher outlining the procedure, I was assigned a primary editor who has stayed with me as a go–between throughout the process. I suffered through a couple of rounds each of content editing (I ended up rewiring an entire chapter to include more details about the mining process), followed by line edits. That done, the book went to cover design, and to the publisher, Lea Schizas, for final review.  All in all a positive experience.

JF: What’s the next story you are working on?

JS: I’ve got a romance started about a woman charged with restoring an aged hotel on an island, despite a penny-pinching accountant. Working title is “Heartbreak Hotel.” (a throwback to Elvis’ song.) What I’ll most likely spend my time on, though, is overhauling a paranormal romance I wrote a couple of years ago called “Burden of Promise.”

Learn more about GREENFIRE here:
http://museituppublishing.com/bookstore2/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=574&category_id=69&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=1