New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones is the author of the highly acclaimed INSIDE OUT SERIES, and is now in development by Suzanne Todd (Alice in Wonderland, Austin Powers, Must Love Dogs) for cable TV.
In addition, her TALL, DARK AND DEADLY series and THE SECRET LIFE OF AMY BENSEN series, both spent several months on a combination of the NY Times and USA Today lists.
Since beginning her publishing career in 2007, Lisa has published more than 40 books translated around the world. Booklist says that Jones suspense truly sizzles with an energy similar to FBI tales with a paranormal twist by Julie Garwood or Suzanne Brockmann.
Prior to publishing, Lisa owned multi-state staffing agency that was recognized many times by The Austin Business Journal and also praised by Dallas Women Magazine. In 1998 LRJ was listed as the #7 growing women owned business in Entrepreneur Magazine.
Loren Kleinman (LK): Talk about your business background and how that’s prepared you for your writing career.
Lisa Renee Jones (LRJ): In many ways. I think one thing many writers forget is that publishing is a business. Yes, it’s great to write the book of your heart, but it has to be profitable to you as the author and the publisher, be that you or a company, or you won’t be able to sustain writing as a source of income, nor will they. No matter how publishers and editors love books, they have to make a profit. They have stockholders to be accountable, too. In turn though, authors make decisions, like signing with New York houses, just because they have stars in their eyes. They work for free just to say they are published with that house. Indie publishing is NOT less prestigious. Making 10k when you could make six figures on a book because you learn to market and position yourself properly, is the way to go. Get over the traditional publishing hang up and you often become more valuable not just to yourself but to the New York houses. Stop thinking about the image and think about the bottom line.
In my case, I owned a large staffing agency that took many fortune 500 accounts from worldwide agencies and we did it by thinking out of the box and being innovative. I try to bring that to the ever changing publishing industry and the marketing of my books.
LK: The highly acclaimed INSIDE OUT SERIES is now in development by Suzanne Todd (Alice in Wonderland, Austin Powers, Must Love Dogs) for cable TV. Can you tell us about when we can expect this release? What’s the production process been like?
LRJ: It’s been a fun experience. I love Suzanne Todd and her right arm person Julianna Hayes. They “get” the series and that really means the world to me. They love all the things about it I’d hoped people would love and want to bring that to life on screen. There is a lot I can’t tell yet but I hope to have some exciting news in the next couple of weeks. I think we are finally at a point where I might be able to tell more.
Cable TV is different from standard TV in that they don’t do pilots. They write an entire first season. That takes time to perfect and so that process has been what has been happening. And thankfully Team Todd wanted the series to be an edgy Sex in the City, the story of Sara growing and finding herself, in the midst of a mystery. This is a sexy series but sex is not what the series is about and I am thrilled that it was critical to Team Todd to find a show runner and writer who understood that.
A Show Runner can be the Executive Producer, which is Suzanne Todd, or someone working for her. In this case, the Show Runner will not be Suzanne, which is how she can do many exciting projects at one time.
LK: Why do you think reader’s love suspense so much? Are we addicted to it based on something we’re missing in our own lives? What are we missing?
LRJ: I think it’s an escape from everyday life, an adventure we might not always find in real life. I also thing the element of danger lets readers connect to the need we all have to being a survivor in life, no matter what level our personal battle is. Life isn’t all butterflies and I don’t write butterflies. I think a story is much more real to life it’s not filled with fluff we don’t really experience in life. It’s more believable if it’s packed with real darkness. Then the reader gets a believable happy ending. These characters ride out the storm like we all have to do, and still survived.
LK: You also write about the paranormal. Where do you get your inspiration? Do you believe inspiration?
LRJ: I didn’t think I liked paranormal until my husband. He is obsessed with all things zombies and vampires. So I had started getting into that genre of entertainment, be it TV or movies, when an editor said I should write paranormal. I decided it would be fun. Inspiration can come from anywhere. My Knights of White are based on a Mexican Legend, The Beasts of Matamoros, and my husband is Mexican. He told me the story and it morphed into an idea.
LK: How do you maintain your energy to publish and produce as much as you do?
LRJ: Part of it is I literally worked 70-80 hours in my staffing business while raising two kids. I never missed a ball game or school event and was always there to kiss them goodnight and say prayers. I didn’t sleep hardly at all. I was so conditioned to do that for so many years, that when I started writing it was natural to work hard and long. Resting is just weird to me. I get unsettled and uneasy.
LK: How do you go about picking the playlist for each book?
LRJ: It’s really about what calls to me for those characters. I have a lot of music in my books because that music helps me know the characters. It’s all about the emotional connection I want the readers to have to the character. There is a tragedy in BEING ME (Inside Out) and Stain’d THE BOTTOM from Transformers, which is really hard rock, fit the emotional unraveling of that character. Every time I hear it, I’m in that scene and that character’s head.
LK: Talk about how place inspires the construction of particular architecture in your books like hotels or chateaus where the characters meet?
LRJ: The Inside Out series is based in San Francisco. Really my love for that city had a lot to do with how I shaped that series. The wine, the art, the way of life, is all a part of the series. I started with the idea of a journal found in a storage unit, which really happened to me, and then when deciding how to shape the series, my love for SF took over. Then in book 3 the characters go to Paris and I actually went to Paris to write it and I’m go glad I did. I would have gotten things SO very wrong. I used every single thing I did in Paris to create book 3.
The winery in a Chateau in Sonoma in the series is based on a real winery. In the Paris book I tried to touch on how the city feels like New York City, but how the outskirts are a bit like the Hamptons, with Chateaus everywhere.
In The Secret Life of Amy Bensen that I self published and just sold to Gallery, it takes place in my favorite neighborhood in Denver. The coffee shop where my husband proposed is even in the story.
I think location can become a character in the story if done right, and I try to make that happen in all of my stories.
LK: Who is Dr. Kat? Is she real?
LRJ: Yes, Dr. Kat is real. I needed a person who understood the psychology of someone in the BDSM world since I did not. Since Rebecca, the journal writer, didn’t know that world, she needed a guide as well. I ended up writing Dr. Kat into the books as the same guide I had.
When I was writing Inside Out I wasn’t a part of the BDSM world, which I think actually was important to writing it well. Sara, the main narrator who finds the journals (Where you meet Dr. Kat), has never known that world, and the story really isn’t about the BDSM world. It’s about trust, and what is the most intimate scary thing we do, but put ourselves out there sexually. But what if the person we do it with is dangerous?
LK: How do you write effective intrigue?
LRJ: What I just mentioned about the BDSM element of INSIDE OUT and how that touches on the fears and intimacy of a person’s psyche is an example of doing that. Finding the things in stories that make characters truly raw and vulnerable in ways people related is important. And why does that character take the steps they do in life that puts them in danger? Sara is chasing a dream she let pass her by so as she gets lead into this dark work we can relate to her daring to risk chasing that dream only to have it lead her to potential danger.
Aside from that, some basics to me include weaving clues and foreshadowing. When I was working with the producers of the show I was able to give them pages and pages of clues I’d planted in the stories to the ultimate outcome of ‘where is Rebecca?’ discovered in book 4 that comes out in August. Those clues are not just about events but it should be about characters background and motives as well. I do find that first person and only one POV really does lend to great intrigue because the reader knows only what the narrator knows and together the reader and narrator discover the truth. One of the best things I did for my writing in the suspense genre was to get obsessed with the TV show 24. Each episode is a guide to a intrigue packed ride and intense, hanging on the edge of your chair, chapter ending.
LK: If you could be a vampire or a werewolf, which one would you be and why?
LRJ: Vampire because who’d want to ruin their clothes all the time? And despite how sexy my books are I’m modest. I’d rather not end up naked in public.