Jill Barnett: Humor from the Heart

For someone who refuses to force the humor in her books and short stories, New York Times bestselling author Jill Barnett delivers some of the funniest, most emotional romances around. Barnett strives to write about people who seem real and human — characters that her readers can relate to, regardless of the era or setting.

And the setting of a Jill Barnett book can be anywhere on the historical map from medieval England to late 19th century California to a deserted Pacific island to (in March 2001) the whole world of World War II. But wherever this self-confessed “over-thinker’s” vision takes her, readers know the destination will be graced by whimsy, a wealth of vivid detail and lots of heart.

Crescent Blues: Your novels generally feature an inexperienced, often sheltered heroine beset by a stubborn, know-it-all man. What makes this storyline so compelling for you? Is it a question of the opportunity for humor it affords or something else?

Jill Barnett: Well, I guess I hadn’t looked at how my books are similar in character. In fact I think the characters are very individualistic. What they do have is a lot of heart and faith and determination. We are all inexperienced in something. I do believe that in order for us to grow and learn, we must face our fears head-on and overcome them. We have to learn something important about ourselves. That’s what life is. I knowingly test my characters that way. I don’t set out to make a book funny. It either is, or isn’t. You can’t force humor. You cannot force any emotion. If you do, it comes off silly or embarrassingly sappy and melodramatic. Ever wince when you’re reading a book? That’s why.

The heroine of Wicked, Lady Sofia Howard, closely resembles Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet, both in terms of her appearance and her desire for the freedom accorded men in her society. Was this intentional? Do you often model characters on celebrities or people you know?

In creating Sofia’s appearance, I did think of Elizabeth Taylor’s coloring. I hadn’t done a heroine with dark hair and violet eyes before. As for her desire for freedom…I haven’t watched National Velvet in about forty years. I honestly don’t think I had that in mind. I can’t even remember that she did fight for independence in that movie. I’m laughing though. Who knows what lies within my mind?

In my first few books, I used well-known people to reflect a character. I’d pin photographs above my computer. I remember Montana Creed’s features were patterned after Michael Bolton’s photograph on the Soul Survivor album, only tall, very, very tall. I believe I sent that same photo to the publisher and I was truly stunned when the original book [Surrender a Dream] came out with a man who looked like Howdy Doody on the cover — short and red-haired. A friend of mine looked at the cover and said, “Oh look! Montana’s standing in a hole!” I decided then and there that I would never use another celebrity as a model for my characters. Now I just pick looks and coloring that I think fits my vision of who he or she is.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of developing a character entirely from your imagination?

Since my characters are developed from “whole cloth,” the writing is always challenging and sometimes inspiring. I do not create quickly. I can’t write ten pages a day. I really think through each scene, each sentence, and each line of dialogue. I use description to reflect character, not to only set the book or show the world I can do research.

If the words are not right, if the sentence doesn’t fit, I don’t write it knowingly. I do a lot of staring at the screen, my mind in another time and place and inside another person’s head. I do massive amounts of writing, moving, then deleting. (I just cut almost two hundred pages from a book and afterward I was walking around for two days like a zombie.)

I think each thought all the way through, but then I’m kind of an over-thinker anyway. I can physically type/write a book in five months, but it takes me seven months to think a book, and some ideas take even longer. I worked on Sentimental Journey for over 18 months. I’m still working on it.

I hear a lot of writers say, “I just write. I can always fix it later.” That was doesn’t work for me. Oh, how I wish it would! I have this mental braking system that doesn’t allow me to type just anything on the page. It has to feel right. My words, my scenes, my whole characterizations and story each build upon each other, word by word, line by line, paragraph by paragraph. I sincerely wish I could write more productively, and I’m always experimenting with ways to get what I want from my scenes. Maybe someday I’ll hit on something that will make the writing flow easily from beginning to end. There is hope.

Wicked also features a most unusual character — a warrior nun. Did such an order exist? How did you find out about them?

Yes, there were warrior nuns who fought in the Crusades. They fought in the name of the Church. I do massive amounts of research. I don’t just blithely make it all up. Everything is rooted in realism…even the magic in the books.

The warrior nuns were in my research, and so I incorporated Sister Judith into Wicked. I felt the pairing of Judith with Sophia showed Sophia’s youthful folly, her growth and her maturing. I had something to say in this book. It is about young love, about the mistakes we make because of our youth, about the repercussions of the quick emotions, the idealism, and the egocentric behavior we all have in our teens and early twenties.

Your historical romances span the High Middle Ages, the Regency Period and late 19th century America — with a slight detour to an exotic island or two. How do you go about capturing the feel of these diverse locales?

I have been all over the board in my settings and time periods because I don’t want to be locked into one era. I have a degree in history, economic history, and I write about periods that fascinate me. I love the research.

When I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, I would spend weeks researching my stories in the archive attic of the Green Library at Stanford. The books were incredible. The archive room in those days was up in an attic-like garret, where you had to walk across these thin wooden planks into a dark and dusty room in the rafters. There were rows of old, old books and even older oak library tables and little chairs. It was like being in a Dickens novel.

Eventually they moved the archives into a special library with motorized metal shelving and stacked together. Those moving book-stacks made me feel like I’d get smashed between the metal cases. Then someday someone would hit one of those newfangled electric buttons and there I’d be…like Wiley Coyote, flattened between shelves of these wonderful old books with title embossing and Dewy Decimal numbers embedded in my skin.

Sigh…researching there was never the same after they modernized the library.

How important is accuracy of historical detail and language to you?

Accuracy of detail within the book is very important to me. However, a truly intelligent person understands that the research is only as good as the source. There are debatable facts throughout history, i.e. whether individual Scots plaid patterns were actually unique to each clan or whether that was, as art history tends to show, a solely Victorian creation. As a storyteller, you have to decide which side of the historical debate you are going use for your research. You have to make a choice knowing that for some people it will be the wrong one. You can’t please everyone.

As for the contemporary language, my editor, Linda Marrow, gave me some very sound advice when we began to work together, which was on Bewitching. She said, after I had written all of Bewitching in the Regency vernacular, that she was changing the language to read for the people who were reading it now, to make it have a universal appeal. She was absolutely right. I write my books to be read…today. I am fully capable of writing the book in the current historical vernacular. But that would be very egocentric of me. I write commercial fiction.

Were the diverse periods depicted in your novels dictated by your own preferences or by the demands of the romance market?

I have never done anything to the demands of the romance market. I write to my own vision. I’m lucky in that it just happens to work for readers. I had a strong vision from the very beginning:

I wrote and sold on fifty pages — a whaling book when whaling books weren’t supposed to be able to sell. That book, my first, was on the bestseller list for three weeks.

I wrote a insular book about two people trying to make it on a farm, when an editor told me she wanted an adventure — a classic pirate book.

I wrote a dumb blond adventure set in the Philippines that an agent told me was horrible and the readers would hate.

I wrote a book about a witch that I expect no one but Pocket would have published at the time.

I did a fallen angel as a heroine.

I wrote a book about a matchmaking genie in a bottle.

I wrote a single novel with two heroes and two heroines as main characters, with equal time on stage.

I wrote about a real legend of magic ale and about the lore of King Arthur.

And now I’ve written a World War II novel with five main characters. Sentimental Journey will be out in March 2001.

I write the book of my vision, not what someone tells me to write. It says a lot about my editors, both John Scoglamigio and Linda Marrow, that I have been able to write the books I have written. But I always discuss with my editor and my best friend — who is also a writer — when and if we feel the time is right for a certain book. They are part of the process and I respect their opinions. I have so many ideas and books I want to write, but you have to make some business decisions in this career. You just have to make wise ones about content and timing. And most of all, you have to understand the reader.

Was there any particular reason why only two of the three friends introduced in Bewitching– Alec, Duke of Belamere; Richard, the Earl of Downe; and Neil Herndon, Viscount Seymour — starred in novels of their own? Can we expect to read Neil’s romance any time soon?

Neil’s love story was told in Dreaming. I’d have to break up Neil and Giana for them to have their own story. Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about that. Besides, Jonathan and James have stories that need telling someday.

In December, Pocket Books will release A Season in the Highlands, an anthology that also features Jude Devereaux, Geralyn Dawson, Pam Binder and Patricia Cabot. Can you tell our readers something about your novella in this collection?

A Season in the Highlands has my first novella in it…rewritten with a few new scenes I always wanted to add. [“Fall From Grace”] is romp set in Scotland and kidnapping romance. It’s been out of print and unavailable since 1994. It has one of my favorite scenes in it. Readers asked for it, so I rewrote it and Pocket just released it.

Do you use novellas to explore times and settings that have not yet made it into your books?

I do use anthologies to explore future ideas and periods. In “Old Things” [a story included in the anthology That Summer Place] I was writing a test version of a story I’ve had in my head for a long time. Someday there will be a novel with a storyline and characters like Catherine and Michael. An older love story with baby boomers, because I am one.

How did you get involved with writing for That Summer Place?

I’ve always been invited to be in the anthologies I’ve written. They have come to me. I agree to do it or not, and then if I want to do it, I think of a story I want to tell. “Daniel and the Angel” (from A Holiday of Love) is a story that was sheer magic to write. I am very proud of that one. The idea came from sheer fear and a drive on the freeway. (I went past my daughter’s school exit by three off-ramps when Lillian popped into my head.)

Is there a chance that readers will be seeing more Jill Barnett contemporary novels in the near future?

I’ve have moved into the 20thcentury with my settings. I still consider them historical, even my next book which will be set about 30 years ago. I can see myself doing something set now. I just don’t know when that will be.

Recently, you branched out with a “novel of the heart” spanning World War II and the lives and loves of several characters. Can you tell our readers something about Sentimental Journey?

Sentimental Journey has its roots in family experience. One character is loosely based on my father. I adore the time period. I’ve had this idea since 1991, and I’ve been letting it pickle until the time was right and until the book would be published in a special way, because I can only do this particular idea once. The story spans three continents and had five main characters and many secondary characters. The research has been massive and at times overwhelming. The book was very difficult to write. There are pints of my blood on the pages of this one. But those who have read the book say it is a groundbreaking novel. I guess we’ll see.

This appears to represent a new direction for you in more ways than one. Could you tell our readers more about what it means in terms of your future books?

For the future, I can’t tell you what I will write. I believe I write Jill Barnett books and those stories evolve and grow and challenge me creatively, mentally, and emotionally. That’s what writing is all about to me, pushing myself as a writer and thinker, exploring characters as deeply as I can. I learn from the characters. I write about people who I want to seem very real and human, not bigger than life, but people readers can relate to, people who face adversity and come out better for it. I write about how life changes us. Creatively I find that fascinating. I will always be true to my vision, wherever that takes me.

One of the heroes of Sentimental Journey is the grandson of Jack Cassidy, a mercenary in Just a Kiss Away. Are you consciously creating a “lineage” like Jude Devereaux’s Montgomery clan? How do readers respond to this interconnectivity?

The reason J.R. Cassidy in Sentimental Journey is the grandson of Jim Cassidy from Just a Kiss Away, is this story idea came from the writing of Just a Kiss Away. I was going to write this story after Just a Kiss Away, but I decided to write Bewitching instead. Back in 1991, J.R.’s story was going to be set during World War I. About six years ago I decided to combine that idea with a World War II novel I wanted to write, and Sentimental Journey, as it is now, was born. My editor has known about this book for years.

I don’t tie all my books together. Once in a while a character jumps out at me, like Sophia on the pages and Wonderful, and then I decide that character needs their own book. But I have never set out and planned a series. I did approach Pocket many years ago, 1995, about doing a fairy tale series, three books, based on classic fairy tales. But they didn’t want them, and the publisher asked me to wait. I doubt if I’ll ever do them now, but they would have been such fun. The idea was innovative then. Now, it’s not. I like to feel what I’m writing is classically commercial, but also fresh.

Speaking of characters jumping out of the box, which of your characters are the greatest favorites among your readers?

Well, I hear the most about Joy in Bewitching and Lollie in Just a Kiss Away. Readers loved these women and the men in their lives. From what readers have told me over the years, they understand these two characters in a very personal way. It’s quite a compliment.

The particular historical focus of Surrender a Dream makes it seem a little unusual in the context of your other novels. What attracted you to the struggle between California farmers and ranchers and the Southern Pacific Railroad?

In Surrender a Dream, I lived in the area where I set most of the book and when I was researching and read about the Mussel Slough incident I just had to use it. The actual idea for the characters came from a drive down Route 101 to visit family during Thanksgiving. Once I had the idea, I set about finding the right time and place for it. The plot came from the research. The character idea came from a fence.

Ideas come from the strangest places. The idea for Just a Kiss Away came from a line of dialogue when I was brushing my teeth. The creative mind is a vast and surprising thing.

Have social issues inspired any of your other novels?

I usually deal with social issues in my books, whether they take place on a deserted island or in the Welsh Marches. In Sentimental Journey the theme is war’s affects both internationally, nationally, and individually. How lives are changed. How heroes are made from everyday people.

What comes first for you, plot or character? How do you “grow” a book from that beginning?

Always from the characters. I read once that a book is never about any thing. It’s about feelings. It’s about reaction. It’s about emotion. I believe that. The heart of a story comes from who the characters are. The plot comes from the research.

Do you have any particular tricks that you use when the words refuse to flow?

If you have any tricks to use when the words refuse flow, will you please let me know?

When you’re writing, do you consciously seek out situations that lend themselves to humor or do such situations arise organically from plot and character?

The humor comes from who the characters are, their individual situations, and from my mind. I rewrite constantly. Books are about emotion and writing emotion is truly difficult. Sometimes no matter how hard you try you can’t nail down what the character is feeling. It’s really difficult and you have to have the patience to look for feeling. It has to be honest and ring true. Sometimes you can see the depth of that character’s feelings just out of reach. It takes a long time to grasp it, pull it up, and translate that onto the page in a way the reader can understand and relate to. Being a good writer, continually trying to get better and to grow, understanding and using writing techniques, exploring language and controlling point of view, all really help me.

What feeds the humorous impulse for you? Has there been any time when it was particularly difficult to capture that feeling?

Emotion is never easy to write. But the funny scenes come from out of the blue. I never plan them. They just appear…like magic and I find myself laughing and having fun. I did find it very difficult to write after my husband died. Sometimes it’s still very difficult. I miss him terribly. He was so much a part of who I am.

What advice would you give to aspiring “love and laughter” writers?

If you want to write humor, you’d better be a cockeyed optimist; it should be part of your vision. Part of who you are. If it’s not, write to your own truth, whatever that may be. That is the only way to become a great storyteller. It’s a writer’s vision, their view of the world and of people in it, that forms their voice, and it’s that individual voice alone that readers relate to. Your words have to be honest.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

There are two kinds of writers. Writers who are in the business of writing, professionals who tell stories, write books that are there solely to entertain. And there are blood writers, people who have to write; it’s part of who they are, because in every book they find they truly have something important say. Sometimes professional writers mature into blood writers, and sometimes blood writers turn professional. Both kind deserve our admiration and respect.

Don’t go into this business only to make money, only for your ego and to see your name on the cover of a book. Go into it with a deep respect and love of storytelling, a love of creating, of using words to paint a panorama, to make a point, or to make someone laugh and cry and feel. If you do that, the business won’t break you.

Jean Marie Ward