I am so excited to introduce MaryJanice Davidson, the ridiculously talented author of Yours, Mine, and Ours, book #2 of the BOFFO Series. Click Here to read my review of this book. Davidson is also well known for her wonderful Undead Series. MaryJanice was kind enough to answer a few of my questions. And boy did I have fun seeing what crazy/brilliant answers she came up with.
Author Bio
MaryJanice
Davidson invented a) her children, and b) the vampire chick lit genre. Also the
Internet. She is kind to (some) children and (occasional) small animals, and
enjoyes referring to herself in the third person. Appearing several times a
year on the best-seller list, as well as occasional Federal "person of
interest" sheets, she takes time from the living hell that is being paid
to do what she loves best to seek out the nearest Cinnabon franchise. Her goals
include working for world peace, figuring out how to make potstickers, and
speaking at writer and reader conferences around the world. (Australia is still
recovering.)
Visit her blog to check out the antics
of some of MJ's heroines (Vampire Queen Betsy, FBI Agent
Cadence/Shiro/Adrienne, and Jennifer Scales), eyeball book excerpts, see where
she'll be any given week, play the "who do you want to play
Betsy/Cadence/Jennifer in the coming movie?" game with other fans, and
mock her weekly. She occasionally tolerates getting mail from readers at
So as you can tell by her bio, she not your average author. She is a little nutty, all out hilarious, and one hell of a writer.
Jennifer: For those who have yet to
read Yours, Mine, and Ours, can you tell us about the book and the BOFFO series
in general?
MaryJanice: No! It’s a deep dark secret. You’ll never get me to talk. Never!
(I’ve got to quit these Law and Order: Criminal Intent marathons. But I lust after Robert Goren, and so I am
weak.)
Anyway.
Unlike the world in most of my other books, the world of YOURS MINE AND
OURS, and ME MYSELF AND WHY, doesn’t have so much as a drop of the
paranormal. Instead it’s about an FBI
subsection called BOFFO: the Bureau Of False Flag Ops, and it’s staffed
entirely by people with psychological problems.
You know the saying set a thief to catch a thief? This is set a nutjob to catch a nutjob. Or a kleptomaniac to catch a kleptomaniac,
someone suffering with MPD to catch...like that.
Everyone who works for BOFFO has some
sort of psychiatric disorder. And this
is very deliberate so of course precautions are taken. Just a few of the rules are mandatory therapy
sessions, T-group, and following medication orders. If an agent is compliant in all things, they
are granted lawful authority. And
handguns. And pepper spray! Okay, not pepper spray. That would be crazy. They could really hurt people with pepper
spray.
The main characters are the Jones
“sisters”: Cadence, Shiro, and
Adrienne. They are three women living in
the same body. Cadence, the oldest, is a
bubbly, warm-hearted blonde who loves puzzles but shrinks from confrontation of
any kind. Shiro is her frosty
counterpart, a closed-off anti-social weapons expert. And Adrienne is a red-headed psycho whose
house-warming soirees make the Blitz look like a garden party.
Together with their partner, a clinical
sociopath named George Pinkman, they track killers, solve crimes, date internationally
famous bakers, and struggle with government paperwork and underfunding. You gotta have hobbies, right?
Jennifer: Hobbies are key. They help silence the little voices in my head. Wait! Did I say that out loud? Anyway, what were the best and most
challenging parts of writing your book?
MaryJanice: They’re actually one and
the same: I had to do tons of research,
more than for any other book I’d written.
Not only am I an utter layman when it comes to all things psychological,
I didn’t go to college: I’m a layman squared!
So I not only had to research the field enough so my readers could
understand, I first had to break it down enough so I could understand. This was
all new territory for me, and exciting, and fascinating.
And terrifying. Some of these poor people...it makes me
simultaneously sad for them and proud of the health care workers trying to
badly to help them. MPD (now referred to
as DDM: dissociative identity disorder), mirrored self misidentification, Capgras delusion, and sociopathy...yes,
sociopaths are capable of dreadful soul-shattering deeds, but their defect is in
their absence of conscience.
Jennifer Q3: After reading your book, I
was astounded by the rich amount of in-depth information you put into every
page.
MaryJanice: Oooh, excellent! Now talk about the gripping storyline and the
realistically snarky dialogue. Oooh, I
love being interviewed...
Jennifer Q3, cont.: How much research did you have to do for
Yours, Mine, and Ours?
MaryJanice: Gobs and gobs.
Jennifer Q3, cont.: Did what you find make a big impact on how
your book turned out?
MaryJanice: Completely! As I learned more and more about the
psychiatric disorders I’d given my characters, I’d get more and more
insight. Plot ideas, character
ideas...it all came bubbling up.
Jennifer: Can you tell us a little
about your writing routine and process?
MaryJanice: Sure...I work in my home,
with a laptop, often in front of the TV (I know, it’s deplorable!). My
assistant works out of my house, too, and in the mornings we usually answer
reader mail, go over whatever speaking invitations I’ve gotten (I love
traveling and I love giving speeches about the nutty business I’m in!), work on
promoting whatever my current release is and whatever book I’ve got coming
out...like that. In the afternoon I edit
what I wrote the day before and try to add at least 20-30 pages.
Jennifer: If Yours, Mine, and Ours
were being made into a movie, who do you imagine playing the main characters?
MaryJanice: I’d love to see Sarah
Michelle Geller as Cadence, Maggie Q would be a terrific Shiro, and Christina
Hendricks would be a formidable Adrienne.
Formidably hot! As for George,
he’s such a bastard that I’d love to see a real baby-face actor cast, like the
kid who plays Joffrey on Game of Thrones,
or Matthew Morrison from Glee, or
Seth Green (Scott Evil from the Austin Powers).
Pictures are in order as mentioned above:
Jennifer: I have to admit, I totally see all those actors as the main characters. Can you tell us three
surprising facts about yourself?
MaryJanice: 1) I’m immature. 2) I have a potty mouth. 3) My favorite breakfast is Malt O’Meal with
a V-8 chaser. Oh...whoops! Surprising
facts...uh...well, believe it or not, I was raised better, so my parents are
not to blame for my many personality defects.
I’m also not into designer shoes; I get most of my footgear from Target
and DSW. And I’m a recovering Miss
Congeniality.
Jennifer: I think the best part of Yours, Mine, and Ours was the characters and their odd personalities. How do
you come up with your character's personalities and traits? Do you base any of
them off yourself or people you know or are they purely from scratch?
MaryJanice: It’s a combo,
definitely. I’m lucky my friends and
family are weird. And I mean that as the
highest compliment: they’re nuttier than
peanut brittle! So sometimes my
characters are an amalgam of people I think up as well as people I know.
Jennifer: Ooh, I got to look up a new word. Amalgam, I like it. So what kind of
books do you like to read? Have any favorite books and authors?
MaryJanice: I’m pretty eclectic; I’ve
been devouring books across genres since I was a teenager. My roommate used to tease me when I’d come in
from the library with an armful. A
typical pile would have a true crime book by Ann Rule (the reigning goddess of
true crime; check out Small Sacrifices or
The Stranger Beside Me and you’ll be
spoiled for anyone else), Gone with the
Wind (I must have checked out that book two hundred times before I finally
bought it), a Little House book (The Long
Winter is a fave, though reading it makes me want to live in my fridge
while I gorge myself and fret about the Ingalls family), a couple of cookbooks
(I now have a closet of them...I love reading them! And the more pictures the better.), Double Whammy by Carl Hiaason (who’s
funnier on his worst day than I am on my best), anything by Andrew Vachss (the
one-eyed kick-ass king of New York noir,
except noir is too mild a term.
Vachss writes grime, and he’s not afraid to get dirty in the process), some
paranormal romance...I read all over the place.
What a terrible place the planet would be without books.
Jennifer: I've noticed that you have a
knack at creating unique and multi-dimensional characters. Do you have a
favorite character to write? Is there a character who is a bit harder to write
than the rest?
MaryJanice: Shiro’s the hardest,
without a doubt. She has none of
Cadence’s social skills, and none of Adrienne’s psychosis, and that’s a good
thing, because she’s got plenty of her own problems.
It probably says something about me
that I have less trouble relating to a raging psychotic like Adrienne, and more
trouble trying to understand Shiro. She
strikes me as cold and lonely. There’s a
chasm inside her that she absolutely acknowledges, and refuses to fill it with
any of the gentler emotions. She’s a
classic case of “hurt them before they hurt me”, except it’s even deeper than
that: ignore them so there’s never even
the tiniest chance I could like them, so I’ll never have to hurt them before
they hurt me”. If she’s the ice to
Adrienne’s fire, Cadence is the marshmallow in the middle. Mmmm...marshmallows...
As for one of my favorite characters,
I’m joining my editor and lots of my readers by voting for Cadence’s partner,
George Pinkman. He’s a clinical
sociopath, a word getting tossed around an awful lot (thank you, Law and Order franchises), but he’s the
real deal. And I must be doing a
wonderful job with his character, or a terrible job. Because he’s
a sociopath, not some loveable scamp, like Dennis the Menace with
handcuffs. But people really like
him. He’s unpleasant and selfish, loves
trouble and loves making trouble, and
he rarely has a kind word for anyone. So
when he does do something nice, I guess it makes more of an impression than if
someone nice did something nice. But as
Cadence’s partner, he catches all kinds of crap. He’s often cuffed or tranked (or both) and
unceremoniously hauled away to various ER rooms or holding cells when Adrienne
is wreaking havoc. His partner(s) often
create a sort of hurricane of felonies and he gets sucked into them, to his
great great displeasure. He’s kind of my own personal Wile E. Coyote.
Jennifer: I can't even begin to tell you how much I love George. Him being a sociopath is just the icing on the cake. Woah, that got weird. Anyway, is there any writing
wisdom/tips you have learned along your writing journey that you can share with
us first-time writers?
MaryJanice: Yes! Never quit, ever. I had over a decade of
rejection slips before I sold Undead and
Unwed to Berkley. My twenties were
all about rejection slips, and my thirties were all about building up a body of
work that made the best-seller lists.
I’m pretty excited to see what’s in store in my forties! But none of that would have been possible if
I’d decided that rejection slip #2,262 was my cue to give up.
Jennifer: What projects are you
currently working on? Personally, I can't wait for more of the BOFFO and Undead
series.
MaryJanice: Then you’re in luck! UNDEAD AND UNSTABLE, the 11th book
in my Betsy the Vampire Queen series, is out this June, and next winter the
third in my FBI trilogy will be released.
I’m also working on a paranormal anthology, UNDEAD AND UNDERWATER, with
a Betsy/Fred-the-mermaid team-up. So
there’s all sorts of Betsy/Cadence/Fred shenanigans to look forward to. Or endure, depending on your viewpoint.
Jennifer: I can't thank you enough for
taking the time to answer a few of my questions. I hope you had as much fun as
I did. Is there anything else you would like to mention before we part ways?
MaryJanice: Just that I regularly post
free chapters on my website, FB page, Yahoo group, etc., and we do contests for
free autographed books at least once a month.
There’s also info on my upcoming guest appearances, book tours, and
TV/radio interviews. http://www.maryjanicedavidson.net/
Jennifer: Thank you, MaryJanice, for holding nothing back. It was a joy interviewing you and I wish you all the best in your life and career.
