Interview with contemporary romance author Emily Mims

Romance author Emily Mims is here today and we’re chatting about her new contemporary novel, Smoke.

During her virtual book tour, Emily will be awarding a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too.

Bio:

Author of thirty romance novels, Emily Mims combined her writing career with a career in public education until leaving the classroom to write full time. The mother of two sons and grandmother of six, she and her husband Charles live in central Texas but frequently visit grandchildren in eastern Tennessee and Georgia. She plays the piano, organ, dulcimer, and ukulele and belongs to two performing bands. She says, “I love to write romances because I believe in them. Romance happened to me and it can happen to any woman-if she’ll just let it.”

Welcome, Emily. Please share a little bit about your current release.
Smoke is the second offering in the Smoky Blue series. Concert violinist Francesca Giordano is hiding out from her would-be assassins by posing as a bluegrass fiddler. She finds herself falling for the much older, charismatic bluegrass singer Cooper Barstow, knowing she can’t stay with him forever.

What inspired you to write this book?

Each book in the Smoky Blue series features a heroine who plays a different instrument. I thought it would be fun for the fiddler to have a ‘fish out of water’ story.

Excerpt from Smoke:

Cooper hit his front door and took the quickest shower on record. Still, he was almost a half hour late by the time he pulled into Chessie’s driveway. Hopefully she would understand. He was about halfway across the yard when he heard music coming from somewhere inside the house. He slowed down and stopped, listening in astonishment to the outpouring of a violin, a violin in the hands of an incredibly gifted musician. Who was playing the violin? Was Chessie a closet classical music fan? Was that a recording, or was that Chessie herself making this incredible music?

            Cooper glanced in the window and his mouth fell open. It was Chessie. She was standing in front of the window in her pink cotton robe, her fingers flying over the strings so fast they were a blur and her bow moving nimbly over the strings as she made that violin sing. It was Chessie making that incredible music. Music that Jake never in a million years could have made. Music that he himself could never have made. Music that required more talent and technique that she would ever need as a bluegrass fiddler. Music that somehow seemed strangely familiar, even though he didn’t think he’d ever heard it before. Cooper suddenly thought back to his initial reaction to her, the first time he heard her play. He wondered then why a woman of her talent played bluegrass music.

            Now he knew. She didn’t play just bluegrass music. She played classical music too. And she played it wonderfully.

            Chessie Hope was not the simple bluegrass musician she presented herself to be.

What exciting story are you working on next?

My fourth book in the Smoky Blue series is with my beta reader. I have written plots for four more to be written in the next year and a half.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

July of 1982 when Anne Gisony of Candlelight Ecstasy called me offering me a contract for ‘Portrait of my Love’.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I write ‘full time’ in that I’m retired from public education. I don’t spend a full day at the word processor, however. My prime writing hours are between one and six in the afternoon, maybe seven if I’m on a roll, and I seldom work more than three or four hours during that time period. If I’m writing plot I don’t work anywhere near that long.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

Nearly every hero I’ve ever written has been based in some way on my husband. He’s a sweetheart of a man and my heroes tend to be that way also.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a young girl, I dreamed of being a teacher. I briefly flirted with being a doctor when I was in college, but did my student teaching and fell in love with the classroom. (Interesting story here. I never even considered writing as a child. I took one creative writing course in college. The professors told me I had no talent and to go back to the science department. I invited them to my first autograph party. They came.)

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I love writing! I hope that shows in my work.

Links:

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