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Q&A (& Giveaway): Jan O’Hara, author of Opposite of Frozen

On the whole, the town of Harmony did its best to live up to its optimistic name. the streets were neatly plowed, the sidewalks free of snow and litter, the storefronts cheerful and labeled with lettered script. The mountain ranges on either side of the valley were snow-peaked and set off by attractive architecture. ~ from Opposite of Frozen

Harmony is a good word to carry around in your front pocket these days. And books are always a great medium with which to promote such good will, whether they provide more information or ways to reason through chaos or if they simply offer reprieve from political dialogue…as in today’s feature, which invites us to indulge in a light-hearted love story.

cover image for Opposite of FrozenJan O’Hara’s debut novel, Opposite of Frozen, weaves humor, love, and light into its pages of mystery and romance with a story that revolves around the lively dynamics of a group of seniors citizens–walkers, canes, and all.

When Oliver Pike takes charge of his brother’s fledgling tour guide business, he anticipates guiding a bus full of aging clients on a easy ride from Edmonton to Los Angeles. But there’s trouble in the luggage compartment, namely Page Maddux, a half-frozen stowaway buried in a pile of discarded clothes. Oliver would have easily passed her on to paramedics, but the group of seniors insists on saving her from imminent death themselves, bringing her into their fold. Then begins a curious tale of stolen backpacks, missing tourists, and two stubborn hearts brought to bay.

I’m thrilled to host Jan today for a Q&A and am offering a free copy of her debut novel for one lucky reader (on Kindle or in paperback). Click HERE to enter the giveaway (deadline is Tuesday, November 22nd at noon).

Now, welcome Jan O’Hara!

Christi Craig (CC): In your novel, you paint a picturesque setting of a tiny town in the Canadian Rockies and–alongside the budding romance of Oliver and Page–slip in a little mystery. Elusive characters, tricky cell phones, and locks that won’t give. While Harmony is a fictional place, is there any truth in the mystique and magic of a small Canadian community?

jan-oharaJan O’Hara (JO): To some degree, I believe mystique and magic are in the eyes of the beholder. We encounter miracles every day, talk to ordinary heroes in the guise of our teachers, our parents, our grocery store clerks. Speaking for myself, I often fail to appreciate those special moments and people.

But as to the qualities of a small Canadian community, I don’t think they are all that different from their American counterparts, with the exception of the number and prominence of flags on display in residential areas, or the accents you’d overhear at the bank. Or the number of concealed-carry permits. Or the emphasis on football.

Okay. There are some significant differences. (I’ve got tongue planted firmly in cheek, in case that’s not obvious.)

Harmony, though, has a mystical quality I’ve never encountered in a real Canadian community: a benevolent and mischievous spirit. The authors in our series make use of him to varying degrees. In my case, because the overall tone of the book is madcap, he plays a significant and helpful role in pushing my hero and heroine together.

CC: Speaking of community, the “oldsters” (as Page calls them) stick together like a band of heroes to save Page from imminent death at the beginning through a little action and a lot of sass talk (who can ignore the pointed stare from a ninety-five year old with a cane?). And, they set Oliver straight near the end. I love that your romance novel includes such fun, atypical characters like this traveling montage of seniors citizens. As you were writing, did you develop a particular fondness for one in the bunch?

JO: That’s a little like asking a mother to choose a favorite from amongst her children! I appreciate different aspects of each of them. Paul Dubois is fun because he resists the stereotype of the rumpled, sexless senior. Mr. Lee is fun because he resists the stereotype of the inactive senior.

I’m partial to Avis. Of all the seniors, she mostly closely resembles my maternal grandmother with a motto which might be described as “give it a try”. Who couldn’t use a little more of that in their life?

If forced to pick one senior, I would choose Mrs. Horton, mostly because she kept her secrets and personality somewhat hidden until the epilogue. I really enjoyed her voice, when it came to me. It was strong and unexpected, and gave a broader perspective to a story told in a lighthearted tone.

CC: Your book is the second in a series of twelve about the Thurston Hotel, a series that incorporates the work of eleven different authors. In your interview with Sophie Masson on Feathers of the Firebird, you say that, “Without a commitment to the other writers in the group, I’m not sure I’d have pushed through to completion…OoF would not exist in its present form if not for the project’s boundaries and invitations.” Beyond deadlines and outlines that come in working on a collaborative project, what’s the greatest gift in being a part of a tight-knit writing collective?

JO: I’ve been blogging for some time and I read a lot about the publishing industry, so you might be forgiven for thinking I’d be prepared for publication. Not so! At least as pertains to me, there’s a vast gap between reading about something and understanding its application.

With a supportive community, though, when I encountered an obstacle or decision quagmire, there was almost always someone available who had already worked it through and was willing to loan their expertise. As a small example, I had help with distribution choices, formatting, cover design, and title selection. It’s enormously helpful to have a place to go where you can have your good instincts validated and bad instincts corrected, especially for your first book. And honestly? The amount of help I required was far too much for any one person to handle.

CC: What are you reading these days?

JO: For non-fiction, The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel. It’s a fascinating look at the commonalities between New York Times bestsellers as teased out by a text-reading computer program.

For fiction, I’m trying to keep up with my colleagues in the Thurston Hotel Series, which isn’t easy with a new release coming out every week.

That should be enough, but I got sucked into A Man Called Ove. It’s absolutely wonderful. Humorous and profound. It also features one of my favorite types of men: the kind that bristle and shout, but are principled marshmallows on the inside.

CC: Along with publishing Opposite of Frozen, you also have an essay on “The Health and Maintenance of Writers” in the recently released writing guide, Author in Progress (Writer’s Digest Books, 2016). With a debut novel under your belt and several thriving writers’ collectives at your back, what’s next on your docket?

JO: I have five partially completed manuscripts on my hard drive, of which three are a series of linked contemporary romances that revolve around a Texan family. (Don’t ask me why I’m drawn to that part of your wonderful country, but I am.) My daughter, who is an intuitive and helpful beta reader, insists I have to finish the first in that series. She wants to revisit one scene, which she read more than five years ago and still recalls as being “hysterical”. It’s hard to argue with that opinionated opinion, so I won’t, especially since she still lives at home and we get to share a dinner table.

Jan O’Hara lives in Alberta, Canada with her two children and husband (aka the ToolMaster). She writes a regular column for the popular blog, Writer Unboxed. Once obsessed with helping people professionally, she has retired from medicine and now spends her days torturing them on paper. See? Win-win scenarios really do exist. While Opposite of Frozen is Jan’s first published novel, she is hard at work on its successor. Visit her website, follow her on Twitter, like her author page on Facebook.

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway by Nov. 22nd for a chance to win a copy of Opposite of Frozen!

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Welcome Dave Thome, author of the romance novel, Fast Lane

“Don’t let anybody write your story for you. Say what needs to be said. Write your own story.” ~ Taequanda, in Fast Lane

Often in life, we approach a situation or a goal (or a relationship), letting outside assumptions and expectations fuel our vision, only to discover that the truth of the matter is not at all what we anticipate. The same can be said for Lara Dixon, the protagonist in Dave Thome’s debut novel, Fast Lane. In the quote above, Taequanda is talking to Lara, who is on a hunt for the inside story of Clay Creighton and his man-centered, womanizing business, Fast Lane Enterprises. What Lara discovers once inside Fast Lane’s inner circle, more so when she gets to know Taequanda, is that everyone harbors a secret and no one fits their facade. Lara is torn between writing truth or fiction.

In a post on Babbles from Scott Eagan ( of Greyhause Literary Agency), Eagan empasizes a few “musts” in category romance novels: not “to see [characters] in bed and having a full on romance after the first meeting” but “to really get to know who these people are AS people. Emotion, motivation, depth.” Dave Thome’s novel gives readers exactly that, a satisfying romance with well-developed characters. I’m honored to host Dave today, where he talks about his writing journey and the discoveries he made along the way.

CC: When you started out writing, did you imagine you’d embark on the journey of a romance novel? I’d love to hear more about your background and how you came to be a Man Writing a Romance.

DT: Way back. Way, way back, I always assumed I’d write novels. But I also liked writing articles and columns for my high school paper, so I became a newspaper reporter. I loved being a newspaper reporter. Every day I got to meet new people and write about different things. Literally. When you’re just out of college and work for a small-town paper, you’re writing about a new math program at the high school in the morning, the last local survivor of World War I in the afternoon, and a stampede of dairy cows circling a house near downtown the next morning. (Seriously, I once wrote an article about how cows got spooked on a dairy farm in the middle of the night, broke down a fence, ran along the highway into Watertown, Wis., turned onto a side street, randomly circled one house, left—and returned a few minutes later to circle the house again. In the opposite direction.)

Anyway, newspaper stories are kind of like mini novels. Really mini novels. Like 400 words instead of 55,400 words. But you have to hook people right away. The story has to flow. You work in dialog (quotes) and narration and use description to help readers visualize things. You don’t really build to a climax, but there’s usually some element of tension in a newspaper story. Lots of news involves tension. A good reporter also has to know something about human nature. You have to get to know people quickly and assess their veracity and character. That translates into writing fiction, too.

I started a couple of novels over the years but never got anywhere. They seemed too big and complex. Then I discovered screenplays, and they seemed like a good idea because not only are they a lot shorter than novels (18,000 words), they also have a structure you have to follow. Certain things have to happen by the end of page 1, 3, 10, 28 and so on. And you have to finish by page 120—max. For comedy, finishing by page 90 or 95 is even better. Having those goals in mind helped me focus on elements of story and character that had to be developed. My mindset is exactly the same when I write novels, only now it’s a matter of rhythm instead of a matter of having an absolute page number to hit.

I ended up writing twenty screenplays in about twenty years. I wrote comedies and thrillers and sweeping science fiction action stories. The first four weren’t very good, but something clicked on the fifth. I was in a writing group and I brought in the first seven pages of what I was working on and one guy tore me a new one, making big red circles on my pages to make sure to dramatize how much he hated my dialog. He did this in front of the whole group, eight guys, I think. And then he said the lines his way—and he was absolutely right. I went home and started at the beginning and rewrote all the dialog to sound more natural—shorter sentences, dropped words, things like that—and the script just came together. When the dialog became more organic, so did the characters and the story.

That script, TERMINAL SEX, is about a woman in her late thirties who was recently divorced, hated her job and was having problems with her snotty sixteen-year-old daughter, so she follows a friend’s advice and logs into an Internet cybersex website. I made up everything that happened online because it was 1994, and I had never seen the Internet, but I made the cyberspace sequences into scenes with the characters in fantastical settings. Sex and murder ensue, and TERMINAL SEX won a writing award and got me an agent at a fairly high-profile agency in Hollywood. The script got read by some cool people—actors, producers and directors—but no one opened their wallet. Then some writer friends who were hot after having a big TV movie success tried to sell it to a network. Everyone there loved it except the last guy. The guy who had all the power.

After that, METAL MOM, a comedy about a woman who continues her heavy metal singing career when her kids are in high school almost got made twice. Another comedy, THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS, was next up on a company’s docket until they had a movie tank so badly they lost their financing. And yet another script, FRANKIE BIG LEAGUES, about a gangster who coaches his thirteen-year-old daughter’s softball team, got optioned for money but went nowhere.

At that point, I’d had enough of screenplays, so I wrote a novel, CHICK FLICK, during Nano in 2006 and worked on it for the next two years. It’s the opposite of a screenplay, with lots of the action going on inside the main character’s head. People in my writing group liked it very much, but it’s a really dark romantic comedy with a male lead. In some ways it’s “literary,” in others it’s like a romance novel, so it’s hard to imagine a traditional publishing market for it. I will eventually self-publish it.

Fast Lane came about because the writing business my wife, Mary Jo, and I have run since 1999 had its worst quarter ever at the end of 2009. She knew a woman who published erotic romances online, so she thought that might be something to do while business was down. I thought that if she was willing to do that, I should, too. But neither of us ended up writing an erotic romance. Fast Lane began as an idea for a screenplay that I started but never finished twenty-five years ago. I tried to write it in the erotic romance style, but I couldn’t stop myself from cracking up like a sixth-grader. Not a good thing. But the story was much better after having steeped in my subconscious for a quarter of a century, so I decided to make it a contemporary romance instead.

CC: In FAST LANE, your minor characters add such depth to the story — from Taequanda, one of the women in the rotation, to Morgan Hopkins, Clay’s security guard (one of my favorites, by the way). Did you spend a lot of time initially on character development? Or, did the characters fully come to life during rewrites?

DT: I don’t develop anything initially. I’m the epitome of a pantser. The side characters, believe it or not, always come to me when I need them.

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