Been waiting for an excuse to invite Author Jody Wallace to the blog. She’s here this morning talking about her new urban fantasy release The Whole Truth. You can read the first scene here, which I have just done, and am totally hooked. Ready to download it along with another one of her books I found while trolling around on her site. So many books, so little time.
Cleopatra Giancarlo is different from your average twenty something career girl. For one thing, she knows when people lie because she can see the truth in their shadows. For another, she doesn’t use her power for good. Or evil. After repeated failures to help others, she mostly just uses it to get deals at Bloomingdale’s. She fears what the government would do if they discovered her ability, yet she longs to find out if there are people like her out there. If there’s anything more she could be.
She gets her wish when two strangers whisk her away from her old life and introduce her to the world of suprasensors. John Arlin and Samantha Grooms represent an organization called YuriCorp, one of many privately-owned firms that employ supras like Cleo to increase their profit margin. Any of these firms would be thrilled to have Cleo on staff, and their methods of recruitment aren’t always friendly.
But even in the world of supras, Cleo doesn’t get to be normal. Her new boss wants her to go undercover and seek traitors in the company ranks. Her new friends know what she can do and how to work around it. And her new assignment might end up with her in a coma–or worse.
Good morning, Jody. Tell us about yourself, your books, and what the hell an amigurumist is.
Know how authors write these books and they’re really long and the books take forever to finish? Maybe you don’t, so I just told you. Well, I write novels sometimes, and it takes forever. So that’s how I got into crocheting.
Once I started crocheting, I knew I didn’t want to do any huge projects — like NOVELS — so I tackled little stuff. Amigurumi is the art of crocheting tiny, cute animals, hence amigurumist, so I get to stitch “the end” into my creative crochet projects a lot more quickly than I do in my writing. Recently tiny, cute animals have been too much for me, too, so I’ve started crocheting earrings. I may need to change my website to earringurumist or something.
Crocheted earrings…how uniquely fabulous! If I could wear earrings, I would hit you up for a pair, but alas, it is my cross to bear in life to have underdressed ears. 
Cleo, our Whole Truth heroine sees truth in people’s shadows. Tell us how this concept came about for you. And I want to know, if you could see people’s truths, would you choose to?
It came about, as do so many of my novel ideas, as a short story. Needless to say, it swelled from there. I thought about what types of paranormal powers I’d seen characters possess in books and movies and what magic or science had been used to explain those powers. What powers, I wondered, would be the most exciting for humans to have? Strength? Agility? Flight? Invisiblity? And then I said, to heck with it, and made some stuff up about supersensors. They don’t have anything different than normal humans–they just have the ability to access their senses in more enhanced ways than we do.
I would not want to see people’s truths. I think I’d find, Iike Cleo, that everyone’s a liar, and it would get old fast. I would want the power of instant teleportation of me and all my family and my crap on vacations. Or maybe healing. No, wait, probably I’d pick immortality. At least for the first 1000 years.
This novel looks beautifully intense and intricate. What’s your research process, and how much of it did you need to do on this one?
How much research I did was directly proportional to how much I wanted to procrastinate each particular scene. I researched a huge variety of items for this book. Management consulting, accounting practices, kaizen, burglar alarms, those bug zapper things, people who test perfumes, telepathy and telekinetics, potato salad, Nolensville Road in Nashville, what a “river cooter” really is…that didn’t make it into the book, though. But did you know some turtles can breathe through their butts??
I’ll need a full report of what a “river cooter” is next time I see you, please. How much will romance play a part in this novel? Do we have any love scenes to look forward to?
There is romance. There is flirtation, sexual tension, at least one date, and some hot guys who take off their shirts. The story is written as the beginning of a series about Cleo, though, so …SPOILER!… it does not have a traditional romance genre HEA where Cleo gets married to the man of her dreams and rides off into the sunset on a Segway. I think she’d like a Segway.
Ooh, you just said the magic word…series! Yes!
Do you plot or pants?
I plotz my pants on a regular basis.
No, wait, what? I do both. Sometimes simultaneously. With this book, I nearly ruined it for myself. Long ago, when I was but a lass of some young age I can’t say because it would reveal my current age, I was asked to provide a full synopsis of this crazy book idea I had about a woman who could see lies. I painstakingly wrote that synopsis and then found I hated the very idea of that book. It didn’t get written at the time. Then, later, it did, and it bore little resemblance to that first synopsis.
Luckily, a synopsis evilly ruining my writing libido only happened once. Now my kids do that.
What’s your take on reviews? Do you read them – the good, the bad and the ugly?
Reviews are for readers. I read them. I do not comment on them publicly. Meankitty even writes reviews sometimes. She’s not very nice. Once she got hate mail for one of her “Bad Libs” reviews where she just takes a bunch of random adjectives and adverbs and such and sticks them in a fake review form. I treasure that almost as much as my 3 pieces of fan mail.
I seriously hope I never cross Meankitty in a dark alley.
Who are your favorite authors in and out of the romance genre, and what are you reading now?
Right now I’m reading Lyndsay Buroker’s newest book Torrent, Part 1 of Rust & Relics. I love her stuff. Favorite authors include Ms. Buroker, Linnea Sinclair, Natalie Damschroder, Ilona Andrews, Clyde Edgerton, Sandra Boynton, Marion Chesney, Carla Kelly, JK Rowling and Charlaine Harris. Among others.
A selfish question – how do you balance writing with family and the day to day of life?
I don’t. I suck. Just don’t tell my family. I think I have them fooled.
When is your most productive time of the day to write, and where do you do it?
I write when the kids are in school, in my recliner, in complete silence. The only sound allowed is the purring of a cat. Let’s just say I’m not very flexible. I don’t remember how I managed to get anything done when kids were at home. It’s like a bad dream to me now. Which isn’t to say I dislike my children. I don’t. I think I wrote a lot when they napped and after they went to bed.
Is there anything else you’d like us to know about The Whole Truth?
It’s less than $4, before tax?
Find The Whole Truth for only $3.99 on Amazon or add it to your Goodreads list.
Visit Jody’s website: http://www.jodywallace.com
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