#Interview with @JessePearle for Second Skin

Jesse Pearle grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina in a place where there was no danger in dancing naked in the moonlight at the top of a mountain. Always possessed of a creative mind, but never quite the right amount of focus, she wandered for decades. She received a degree in fine art which she put to poor use working an uneventful desk job for an engineering company when she started writing her first really ambitious piece of fiction. She lives in sunny Southern California with her ever supportive husband and four attention-whoring cats.

Links:

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1. At any given time do you work on only one story at a time and maybe plot out the next one or are there many ideas racing around your head?

At any given time I’m an ADD mess, and it isn’t just the bajillion stories running through my head, either. Among all the varying story ideas, character ideas, scene ideas that are bumping around my brain like a wild carnival ride, I also have marketing strategies, sales data, blog ideas, website plans, and cats.

2. Is there a genre you haven't written in but would like to? Or wish you could write in?

I feel like my writing stretches the boundaries of romance a bit much. If anything, I’d like to rein it in so I could write a true traditional romance, just once. I also wish I was better at writing intrigue. I’m not very good at it, but I keep trying anyway—there’s a bit of an intrigue subplot in Second Skin, but it’s pretty light. It gets more complex through the next three books in the series, though.

3. Do you add an element of romantic suspense in your stories?

It’s a romantic suspense novel, so yeah, but I didn’t write it that way on purpose. I just tend to enjoy a bit of suspense in most of what I write. If I’m not writing sex scenes on every page, I need something more engaging to keep me interested in what I’m writing. The threat of death works just as well, I think.

4. Say you have unlimited funds: What kind of writing office/cottage would you create for yourself?

It would be an airy cabin in the mountains, with lots of high windows, and would absolutely have to have a view of the Blue Ridge Mountain range, or some similar mountain range, like this one: http://i.imgur.com/aldusDc.jpg

5. If you could turn your novel into a TV show, which novel or series would you do? Where would it be set? Network TV (ABC, NBC, CBS), Cable (AMC, BBC, Lifetime) or Premium Cable (HBO, Showtime, Starz)?

Second Skin is pretty racey in content, it features gang violence and steamy sex with light BDSM elements, so it’d likely have to be on cable TV. The setting is Los Angeles. I have a Pinterest board where I collect photos that have inspired me, including actors who I think would fill the roles of my characters best. Alex O’Loughlin would be Sam.

http://www.pinterest.com/jessepearle/second-skin/

6. Finally, tell us about your latest release!

Second Skin is part love story and part coming-of-age story. It’s a love triangle, so there are three main characters. Pilar Flores is the daughter of a drug lord, eighteen at the beginning of the story and trying to find her place in her father’s business. Leo Reyes is one of her father’s employees and the leader of an LA street gang who becomes her father’s right hand later in the story. Sam Blanco is a boy in the neighborhood Leo’s gang holds dominion over, whose goal is to make enough money selling tattoos after high school to get himself and his younger sister the hell out of dodge and away from their abusive father.

The three characters’ worlds collide in unexpected ways, from Pilar’s first encounter with the tragic hero, Leo, to the complicated entanglements that occur when the young tattoo artist, Sam, comes into the picture. While the love story is most definitely between Pilar and Leo, every love story has its obstacles to overcome. Sam is one of those obstacles for Pilar and Leo, but in truth he may be the catalyst that allows the two lovers to understand each other more.

However, at its heart, the entire series is Sam’s story, even though the “happily ever after” isn’t his in this particular book. Sam’s Happily Ever After comes later.

Where to Buy:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
All Romance

The small plane touched down on the runway of the airfield outside Los Angeles. After taxiing to the hangar, Leo powered down the engines and pulled off his headset. He felt like a weight had been lifted, but anxiety twisted in his gut as he worked through his explanation to the old man.

Gustavo had needed to be taken care of, that fact had been clear to him for months. The only reason he hadn’t gone to Arturo Flores about Gustavo’s consistent series of fuckups was because of his promise to Pilar to leave her father out of it.

The deed was done, the memory of the corpse he’d left behind in the little shack in the Sonoran desert still left him ice cold to his core. He’d had to ignore the spark of memory of another pair of eyes whose light the same gun had extinguished two years earlier. Two years to the day, he thought.

Leo no longer regretted any of those bullets, starting with the very first one from his brother’s gun that had pierced his own chest. Each had brought him closer to her. Now all he had to do was claim what was his.

The phone at his hip buzzed as he made his way across the tarmac to the parking lot. He settled in his car and started the engine, turning the AC on full blast while he checked his messages.

911! Call me when you land!

It was from Pilar. Goosebumps rose up on his arms in spite of the hot August air that baked the interior of his car.

Jesse will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to two randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour

 

  a Rafflecopter giveaway