Today’s interview is with Barbara Meyers. By day she is a barista, by night she is a romance and women’s fiction author who also publishes superhero stories under a pen name.
LQ: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
BM: I live in Central Florida and for the past 17 years my “day job” has been at Starbucks. Mostly I write contemporary romance and women’s fiction. I started a non-romance series called Grinding Reality based on my experience as a barista. The first two books are published under my pen name, AJ Tillock. I’m married, have two children, one grandchild and a rescue dog. I’ve been writing fiction for over 30 years.
LQ: What does your writing process look like?
BM: It looks disorganized. It is disorganized. I’m a pantster all the way, and I don’t recommend my process to anyone else. I mostly write on a laptop, usually with a vague idea of where to start a story. I might write several chapters before I have to stop and think about the characters and what they want and how they’re going to get it and what’s going to get in their way. By the time I write “the end” on a manuscript, I’ve got a file filled with notes and ideas, another with character sketches, a sloppy synopsis, a tagline and book blurb. But I rarely start out with any of those things.
LQ: What was your favorite book to write so far?
BM: I’m enjoying creating the Red Bud, Iowa series of stand-alone connected novels. The first was If You Knew, where a former adult film actress relocates to a small Iowa town and her past is exposed during a nasty political campaign.
The second book, If You Dare, which I’m enjoying writing even more than the first, is the redemption story of the villain in If You Knew. It was my editor’s idea which I originally resisted, but then became obsessed with. I’ve learned editors are like mothers. Almost always right.
The next in the series will be If You Stay, featuring 40-something protagonists.
LQ: Who is your favorite character to write about?
BM: At the moment it’s Doug Winston, the former villain who becomes a hero in If You Dare. He’s lost just about everything and he’s the most reviled man in Red Bud. It hasn’t been an easy road to bring him back from his past mistakes, but it’s been interesting to watch him develop. Just to make things extra difficult, he’s also a single dad to a newborn.
LQ: Who are your favorite authors? Have any of them influenced your work?
BM: C.J. Box, Walter Mosley, Sandra Brown, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Karen Robards, Michael Connelly. (Those are just a few.)
They influence me in that I’d like to achieve the level of story-telling craft that they have. Reading good books makes me a better writer.
LQ: How are you doing during the current pandemic?
BM: Honestly? I’m climbing the walls. I’m extremely antsy, but I’m also extremely grateful I have this time to work on the edits for If You Dare. I miss my normal routine like everyone else. I miss seeing my friends and being out of my house. I even miss my day job. I’ve been eating a lot of junk food and exercising more in an effort to burn it off. I spend way more time on social media. But this isn’t going to last forever. In some ways what we’re going through is, I believe, a blessing in disguise. I live in gratitude.
LQ: What are you currently working on?
BM: Promoting Phantom which came out in December. Editing If You Dare. Scheduling the release of it and two other books for 2020. One is a Christmas novella, A Family for St. Nick. The other is another of my “Manuscripts Under the Bed” projects, a YA novel entitled The Color of Nothing.
LQ: Anything else you would like to share?
I’d like to say thanks, Kara, for interviewing me. Self-publishing is a challenge and I appreciate any support for me as an author and any interest it generates in my books.
My pleasure!
Thanks for doing the interview, Kara. Much appreciated!