Hello everyone! Today I have Jill Hughey with me. Jill is the author of Yellowblown series – a wonderful mix of romance and end-of-the-world action that will leave you wanting for more. Who wouldn’t want to pick the brain of such a talented author!
So, without further ado, let me get right with the interview!
Hello Jill! Welcome to Coffee Time Romance. How has your day been so far?
Hi Eva. My day has been busier than expected so far, so I’m happy to take a breather to talk to you! Thank you for letting me visit at Coffee Time Romance.
Glad to be the distraction. 🙂 Let’s take a breather then and talk about what you love. Let me guess, something to do with books? 😉 Would you like to talk about books?!
Oh, I love books, especially romances, so yes, let’s talk about books.
Awesome. I love books too. So which one of those wonderful books is keep you busy these days?
I’ve most recently been working on my Yellowblown series which follows a young woman who is having a perfect sophomore year in college, including finally hooking up with her freshman crush, until the Yellowstone caldera erupts. So far I have two books in the series released. The first is called Eruption and the second is called Rhyolite Drifts. Readers really like the mixture of romance, family relationships, and the touch of geeky science stuff in the books.
I love series. It gives me so much more time with my favorite characters! Let’s talk about Eruption, the first in the series. Can you tell our readers more about the first book and the series?
Eruption is about a young woman’s struggles to find a path to adulthood in the face of a global calamity. The story starts at the beginning of Violet Perch’s sophomore year of college. She has a fun roommate, she’s digging into her classes, and her life becomes darn near perfect when senior Boone Ramer (a totally hot all-American boy) finally acts on the mutual attraction they felt all last year.
When the Yellowstone caldera erupts, it seems like a distant catastrophe, but her Geology 101 professor soon explains the global impact the eruption could have.
Violet tries to keep her perfect life going, but with most of the middle of the country destroyed or shut down, and ash falling even on her campus in Pennsylvania, the writing is soon on the wall. College closes. Boone offers her a ride home to Indiana—it’s sort of on the way to his family’s ranch in Nebraska, after all!—and Violet is happy happy happy when he ends up hanging around for awhile, even if it does mean they are trying to grow their relationship with her parents, her snarky teenage sister, and a whole crew of rural neighbors—including Violet’s high school boyfriend—watching from the sidelines.
But how long can he stay? Though his parents told him not to come home, they didn’t give him a very good reason, and Boone feels a responsibility to his family as the video clips on the news show how badly conditions are deteriorating as the ash continues to fall.
What choices should a young couple make when the survival of their families might be at stake?
Interesting! Global calamity doesn’t sound unreal anymore, unforunately. What was the inspiration behind this story?
Believe it or not, I was a geology major in college so I have an inherent interest in volcanos and earthquakes and that kind of thing. One day I was thinking about how I would react if I heard that one of Earth’s super volcanos was erupting and the story evolved from there.
Wow. Your mind did go on an overdrive on that one. But I am glad it did! Tell me what happens in the second book. Do the families survive?
Survival becomes much less assured than we Americans expect. Not every character survives and I won’t be more specific than that. InRhyolite Drifts, Violet has to do things she never imagined she could, like hunting squirrels or protecting water sources or taking on an unethical bank president. And she has to deal with spending a long period hundreds of miles apart from Boone, with almost no contact. They both have to choose one another under really difficult circumstances. And we don’t know for awhile…do they or don’t they?
Wow. What do you like the best in Violet? Any favorite character trait you would like to mention?
Violet is an independent girl. In her family, she and her mom turn out to be the toughest members, the most practical and able to recognize and do what has to be done. But Violet also tries really hard to be a good friend and a helpful member of the community at a time when people really need to pull together. She’s compassionate but can also be painfully honest with people, including herself. Her one real hangup is with physical intimacy. If she isn’t strongly attracted to the man she’s with, it just doesn’t work for her. Combine that with the fact she doesn’t consider herself to be a knock-out beauty, and you can understand that her confidence with the guys might be similar to what most of us average girls feel.
What’s your favorite review of this book?
This one: “I loved Eruption…. I was so into Violet, Hotness, and the eruption that I came around the corner to the Quarterdeck (the entrance aboard ship or in a Navy facility) where there’s a large-screen TV that’s always set to CNN and saw a map of the US and was shocked when everything was green. I thought, Where’s the red bloom over Yellowstone? The brown smudge spreading across the US? Oh! That’s in the book! It’s FICTION! Thank goodness!” – Roses and Thorns, 4.5 roses
Wow. Beautiful review! Isn’t that motivating as an author? Last question – What is your one advice to aspiring authors like me?
A review like that is very motivating, because I know as a reader that is what I want from fiction—to be immersed in another world or someone else’s life.
My advice for aspiring authors is to keep writing because you love it, but also to revise revise revise. The first draft is the easy (fun) part. The true craft, at least for me, comes when I find the connections or symbolism I didn’t even realize I was writing in, or when I tighten up a paragraph, or finally find the right word. Or delete the first chapter or three (yes, I’ve done that.) And many of those decisions can’t be tackled the first time through.
Deleting the first 3 chapters! That’s the scariest part. But great advise Jill. I have often find manuscripts read so much better after 3 rounds of editing. Thank you very much Jill for your time today!
Thank you for the opportunity to talk about my Yellowblown series, Eva. It’s been fun!
Author Social Media Links:
Facebook : www.facebook.com/jillhugheyromance
Twitter: www.twitter.com/jillhughey
Goodreads : https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5747517.Jill_Hughey
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/J.-Hughey/e/B00MSWBTJY/
