Join my review team!!

Posted on July 13, 2018 by Janice

One group of people matters most to authors – and that’s YOU, the reader. Our readers, have the power to make or break a book by simply telling the world what they feel about it. Loved it, hated it, however you feel, I need your feedback.

As you may know, reviews can be tough to come by these days. So I’m forming a review team of dedicated readers who will receive a FREE advanced release copies of all my work!!

Right now the focus is on the sequel to Love’s Magic, entitled Love’s Trials, scheduled for release in October. Love’s Trials is a contemporary gay romance novel with lots heat, lots of drama and lots of excitement. It continues the story of two characters you met in Love’s Magic, Colin and Joshua. They are in love and supremely happy, until a trial that they could not have anticipated threatens not only their relationship but possibly their lives.I would be thrilled to welcome you as apart of my review team and feel sure that you’ll love reading about Colin and Joshua’s ‘trials’.

Please click here to join up with us!!

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Something that few people know about me!!

Posted on July 11, 2018 by Janice

Tell me one thing hardly anyone knows about you.

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is that I spent 15 years reading Tarot cards and doing Astrological horoscopes for a living. Not only that, but I taught the very first online Tarot class in the history of the world and this was loooong before the Internet. It was on a service known as Quantum-Line, or Q-link which was the precursor to AOL. I taught classes there, led full moon meditations. It was great, GREAT fun!

And it was the beginning of what is now, of course, a world-wide phenomenon, the WEB. It was more fun back then because we were involved in ground-breaking activities and making our own rules up as we went… always MY favorite thing to do.

I enjoyed reading Tarot cards. I never saw them as a way to tell fortunes or predict the future. I used them much as a psychologist (Joshua?) would use ink-blots. They’re a great psychological tool, and a lot of fun.

I’ve always seen the Magician as the card meant for authors. The Magician lifts his wand toward the skies to call on inspiration and then uses the tools he has been given to make that inspiration manifest in the world. This is what authors do all the time. Even those authors who have yet to sell even one book have created something magical. They have drawn on the power of the Universe and manifested that power on Earth. I don’t care if it’s a children’s book, a cookbook, or a contemporary gay romance novel like mine… they are all a manifestation of what is most divine within each of us.

That should make every single author feel like a Magician… because they ARE!

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COME BE A MANIAC!!

Posted on July 5, 2018 by Janice

COME BE A MANIAC!

If you are passionate and enthusiastic about Janice Jarrell’s books, we need your help on the Jarrell’s Bibliomaniacs street team! We are lucky to have such a devoted fan base, and it’s fans like you that make Jan’s books such a great success. If you choose to be a part of our ‘Maniacs’ team, you will be rewarded with free ebooks, Amazon gift cards, and other great prizes. Want to get involved? We’re always in search of outgoing friends to help spread the word. Take a journey with us!! Come be a Maniac!!!

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Which actors would play my characters in the Love’s Magic movie???

Posted on July 4, 2018 by Janice

Which actor/actress would you like to see playing the lead character from your book?

Now I’m embarrassed. I always have an actual person’s face in mind for my characters. Always. And usually that face belongs to an actor or actress. It’s just easier for me to write when I can see the character living out what’s going on in my mind.

I had Colin and Joshua completely fleshed out in the character development sheets I always use when I first start writing. I knew them. I knew what they were like. I knew what the liked and didn’t like. I knew their faults and flaws and weaknesses. I knew their strengths. And I had a (sort-of) idea what they looked like.

Colin, of course, was Irish. And I wanted him to look Irish. It’s a lot of who he is as a man and it was important to me that the character’s image in my mind convey the deep love he feels for being Irish. So, I went looking for Irish men. And this is who I chose:

Kill me now! Yes. It’s Jamie Dornan. But… BUT… I honest-to-god had NO idea who he was when I picked the image. He just looked IRISH! I am no fan of Christian Grey, had never read 50 Shades of anything, have never seen the movies, had never seen Jamie in anything. He just looked… Irish! And, of course, he looked hot as FUCK!

As Joshua said when he first saw Colin on hit motorcycle: “Colin sat astride the bike, his muscular frame wonderfully emphasized by his black leather jacket and tight jeans. In his hand was a helmet emblazoned with a shamrock and the words: ‘Go Irish!’ My God, Joshua thought, his breath catching in his chest. He’s just so fucking hot!”

I know now, of course. Trust me to pick the actor playing the most notorious heterosexual on the planet as the mental model for my gay-as-hell Irish cop.

*sighs*

But… once I saw him I was sunk. He just WAS Colin! So I’m stuck with Jamie Dornan… if such a thing is possible. And, frankly, the Jamie Dornan who was and remains ‘Colin’ in my fevered brain is Jamie as Sheriff Graham in ‘Once Upon a Time’. THAT’ is Colin to me.

Joshua. Again, I went on the hunt for an ethnic look. Joshua is Jewish. I needed a Jewish guy. And there he was.

Again, I had no clue who Adam Brody was when I picked him. I had never seen the OC, didn’t know Adam from Adam in the garden of Eden. I just knew he was Joshua. There were the dark, tumbling curls that Colin drooled over. There was the Jewish strength and calm that he relied on.

In fact THIS is the picture that Colin was looking at when he thought: “Alone in his apartment at night, he studied the only picture he had of Joshua, clutching it tightly in one hand while holding his phone in the other. It was a black and white photo which Joshua had given to him some weeks ago. The photo was beautifully lit and the reflective expression on Joshua’s face framed by his dark, tumbling curls tore at Colin’s heart. He gazed past Colin with dreamy eyes which focused on some distant and unreachable goal.”

So those are the two guys I continually saw in my head as I wrote Love’s Magic. I have to confess… once I’d discovered Jamie Dornan (and I admit that I am really late to that party!) I knew Colin couldn’t have been anyone else. And frankly, having he and Adam firmly planted in my brain made writing Colin and Joshua’s romantic scenes a lot more pleasurable. I mean a LOT!

I often wonder if I’m the only author who uses uber-hot fantasy guys as her mental model when they write. Somehow I doubt it.

Legitimate comments are welcome but ALL comments are reviewed. So spammers, fuck off. You won’t get in anyway.

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My most annoying character!

Posted on July 3, 2018 by Janice

I’ve been asked which character in my story gave me fits or constantly surprised me by going in directions I hadn’t intended, and the answer to that question would have to be, Colin.

I adored that feisty Irishman from the moment he sprang, full grown, from my brain. Cocky, arrogant, and utterly contemptuous of romance in any form, he was a pistol from day-one.

He didn’t seem to GET that I wanted him to fall in love with Joshua. I tried to corral him, entice him, yank and pull him. But still he resisted. Every word I wrote to try to lead him down love’s rosy path ended up sounding hollow and dishonest. It wasn’t Colin’s voice and I knew it. I had to try again because what I’d written was just wrong.

I had to stop writing and listen to what my fiercely independent Irishman was trying to tell me. I had to stop putting words in his mouth and let him speak. And believe me when he did, he had a lot to say.

I discovered that this alpha-male Irish cop wanted to fall in love with Joshua, and in fact needed to fall in love with him. But the many layers of defense that he’d built up around his heart was a roaring whirlpool that drowned out that need.

This was not a man who could easily admit to being afraid. After all he had a reputation to uphold and there’s nothing like Irish ego and pride to ignite feelings of self-preservation. Perhaps it’s not rhetoric to say that Colin was afraid to be afraid. His fears were not focused around one issue. Colin’s heart was a maze of complex questions all of which led back to one chilling answer and one horrifying childhood trauma.

He is not a one-dimensional character and at first I didn’t get that. His resistance to love and intimacy was multi-layered and breaking down one of those layers offered no guarantee that a completely different issue wouldn’t raise its head and slam the door to Colin’s heart shut tight.

I had to explore each layer side-by-side with my independent Irishman. I had to let him lead me down the paths where he feared to walk and understand why he feared to walk them. I discovered a complex, multi-dimensional man whose fears flowed from a deep well of memory, most of which had been bottled-up since childhood. I discovered that his fear of love, intimacy, and commitment came from a legitimate source. I discovered that I couldn’t force him to love. I had to step back and let Joshua lead him to Love’s Magic.

Once I took myself out of the equation and let Joshua take over, the process became easier. I didn’t have to lure, bait, or force Colin in Joshua’s direction. I just had to step back and let him choose to move in the direction he was dying to go.

Even then, it wasn’t an easy process for Joshua or for me. Colin remains frustrating, obstinate and fearful. But Joshua’s struggle to understand the man he loved revealed more about the soul of my complex Irish cop than I ever knew was there.

I hope you will walk beside Colin and Joshua on their journey. I hope you’ll cheer their victories and mourn their defeats as they struggle to find Love’s Magic.

Legitimate comments are welcome but ALL comments are reviewed.

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Gay Sci-Fi… with my grandson!!

Posted on July 2, 2018 by Janice

One of the coolest plot ideas floating around in my brain is one I developed with my grandson, Brian, when I visited my daughter last Christmas. We talked about writing a Gay Sci-Fi novel which focuses on two individual beings, one an Earthling and the other a being named J’Sepp Eldan who comes from another (as yet unnamed) world.

J’Sepp’s world is highly advanced and could offer our planet fantastic new technologies which could eliminate disease, hunger, poverty. They also offer new insights and wisdom which could help Earth realize its full potential and become the paradise it was meant to be. Earth desperately needs this kind of radical change if the human population is to survive the effects of climate change and other self-destructive tendencies.

But before J’Sepp’s people can offer these healing gifts, J’Sepp must determine whether or not our people and his are compatible by experiencing ‘The Convergence’ with a citizen of our world. They must, in effect, become one soul. He has chosen our Earthling hero… who also does not yet have a name, as the most compatible human with which J’Sepp can reach convergence.

Our Earthling is flabbergasted by this proposal and unsure what it all means. He quickly discovers that he and J’Sepp must come to know and care about each other to the point where ‘The Convergence’ is possible. This involves both beings developing a deep understand of each other’s emotional, mental and spiritual character. They must explore each other’s minds, hearts, spirits, and bodies until they become so close that converging becomes a fact of life.

Without ‘The Convergence’, J’Sepp’s world cannot merge with ours and the human population of Earth would become extinct within a very short time.

The convergence itself is not merely a sexual joining although that is a big part of it. It involves coming to know and understand a completely ‘alien’ being at the deepest levels possible, to the point where both comprehend the many ways in which all living things are, in fact, One.

Those are the very dim outlines of what Brian and I sketched out. I think it would be very interesting to develop a character from a world which was totally different from an Earth, and attempt to find common ground and common understandings between their citizens and ours.

Who knows if it’ll ever go anywhere. But I find the idea fascinating and may try to develop it within the next year or so. Besides… won’t it be fun to write a Gay Sci-Fi novel with my grandson??

Legitimate comments are welcome but ALL comments are reviewed. So spammers, fuck off. You won’t get in anyway.

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Joshua walked away from Love’s Magic…

Posted on June 30, 2018 by Janice

I thought long and hard about Joshua before I ever began to write Love’s Magic. Some things I knew on instinct from the moment the character emerged in my mind. I knew he was lonely. I know he’d been abused in his childhood at the hands of an alcoholic father. I knew he was damaged.

Another man might have turned his wounded spirit on others, returning abuse for abuse, but I knew this wasn’t Joshua’s way. He wanted to be healed, but he also longed to heal others who had been hurt as deeply as he had. I think one reason he fell so hard for Colin was that his empathetic spirit saw the pain and darkness that kept Colin’s heart locked away and untouchable.

No two men could have seemed more opposite in nature. What could a swaggering, cocky, self-assured Irish cop possibly have in common with a soft-spoken, reticent, Jewish Doctor of Psychology? But from the very beginning Joshua sensed something deeper in Colin’s nature, something beyond the fiercely independent, I-don’t-do-relationships attitude. He sensed something noble and deeply committed. He sensed a man on a quest to right a terrible wrong.

He didn’t know what drove Colin, but whatever crisis from the past held him captive, Joshua instinctively knew it was a huge part of what made Colin the man he was. He wasn’t under any illusions about the future. Colin had made it very clear on their first ‘date’ that he made no promises to anyone… ever, and he offered Joshua a clear-cut choice: see me on my terms or don’t see me at all.

Joshua tried to do it Colin’s way. He tried to accept his role as the sometimes friend and occasional bed-partner. But Joshua’s self-awareness had grown in the years since he was a shy, awkward boy struggling to believe in his own value.

What I admired most about Joshua was his determination not to let anything cheapen the love he felt for his charismatic Irish cop, not even Colin. He would not allow the love that meant everything to him to be treated as a short-term sexual liaison, bereft of feeling or intimacy, bereft of meaning. He knew he deserved more. He knew Colin deserved more.

Colin’s refusal to admit love into his heart did more to help Joshua grow past the pain of his abused childhood than anything else in his life. He simply loved Colin too much to demean what he felt for him. He found the strength and courage to walk away even though it broke his heart.

Even as the author, I honestly didn’t expect him to choose that route. But any other decision meant agreeing with Colin that what they shared could be minimized. I hated writing those scenes. It broke my heart because I knew how much Colin needed him. But… I had to trust in what he and Joshua were telling me and let them lead me to where they needed to go. I had to trust that they’d be together again if that’s what was meant to be.

Joshua knew Colin could never care for a man he couldn’t respect and who didn’t respect himself. And, even in the midst of his heartbreak, he discovered a new sense of self-worth that brought healing to himself and to his family. And as he walked the shores of Lake Michigan, remembering the nights he’d shared with his charismatic Irishman, he allowed himself to hope that Colin would one day realize that in leaving Joshua had offered him the greatest and most loving gift his heart could give and, perhaps give Love’s Magic another try.

Legitimate comments are welcome but ALL comments are reviewed. So spammers, fuck off. You won’t get in anyway.

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The Longest Journey…

Posted on June 29, 2018 by Janice

Colin and Josh feel Love’s Magic!

I’ve been writing gay romance since I was twelve years old, only back then it wasn’t called ‘gay romance’. In fact, it had no name at all. It was the fifty’s, and it was worth your life to admit to being gay, let alone confess to being a girl who constantly fantasized about relationships between gay men. Hell, I didn’t even know what a homosexual was. I lived on a farm out in the sticks in a tiny Michigan village and I’d never, to my knowledge, even heard the word. I just knew I loved the thought of boy on boy romance. I just knew that there was something hot going on between Tom Corbett and his Space Cadets and all those guys on ‘Combat’.

Naïve as I was, I still recognized that I’d better not say anything to anyone about my weird-ass proclivities. And I didn’t. For many, many years I scribbled out my ‘gay romance’ fantasies then immediately ripped them up. For many, many years. I believed there had to be something wrong with me to be so obsessively fascinated by the idea of men loving men.

Fast forward to 1999 and the dawning of the Internet. I still hadn’t shared my love for gay romance with another living soul, and I remained convinced that there had to be something wrong with me because of my passion for gay love. I knew no one else, at that time, who shared my passion for gay passion.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered Kirk/Spock slash! I had, of course, known there was a passionate romantic link between those two. Who didn’t? But discovering the slash community, beginning with the Kirk/Spock fandom, was like a lightning strike to my mind and heart. My god! There were other women who felt as I did! And not only were they were actively writing the kind of stories I’d been ripping up for years, they were admired for doing so!

For the next twenty years I wrote slash fanfiction, mainly in the ‘Lord of the Rings’ fandom. Overall, I wrote over 337 stories, some as short as 100 words (a drabble) some as long as a series which was over 119,012 words. I enjoy writing my stories. I enjoyed the feedback I received from my readers. It was a creative release I’d been searching for my entire life and I blessed the Internet for leading me to this artistic oasis for my spirit.

But after a while it just wasn’t enough. Writing stories about other people’s characters begin to grow tiresome and repetitive. My first book, Love’s Legacy, began as an AU fanfiction story. I wrote my fandom characters in an alternative universe simply to try to extend my reach. But it fell flat.

Love’s Legacy is the story of how David Gardener and Nate Reese met and fell in love. I actually went so far as to publish it on Amazon. But it just wasn’t good enough, and eventually I withdrew the book from publication. I was still writing fanfiction and it showed. I was writing with someone else’s voice.

Love’s Magic was my very first step into writing my own characters. David and Nate are still there but they are now fully realized individuals rather than existing as a reflection of someone else’s thoughts. Colin and Josh sprang from my brain like a fiery eruption and immediately captivated my soul. Of all my characters, those two are the ones who most completely reflect my ability to step forth as a creative author, freed from any ties to the work of another.

I will always be grateful the slash fanfiction community for nurturing the budding author until she was ready to blossom into a fully realized novelist. It’s been an amazing thing to watch the gay community’s growth over these past twenty years. My own journey has echoed theirs in many ways, and I’m grateful to all those gay activists who fought to give the gay community the rights and privileges they always deserved.

And I’m grateful to the gay romance community, readers, authors, publishers and promoters, who are making these, my retirement years, the most creative ones of my life.

I hope you’ll read Love’s Magic. I hope you’ll meet David and Nate… Colin and Joshua. These dynamic, sexy, and totally adorable men carried me into a whole new world of love, romance, joy, and happily-ever-after’s. I hope they’ll do the same for you.

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Why two gay couples? And why assault?

Posted on June 28, 2018 by Janice

I was asked by someone who read Love’s Magic why I tackled the subject of campus assault in my manuscript. They commented that the subject matter seemed tricky and further added that writing a book which featured TWO unique gay couples seemed like dangerous territory for a first-time novelist. In fact that one aspect of Love’s Magic has drawn more attention than almost any other, which rather surprised me.

I can only say this. As someone who has been an assault victim I felt the subject needed discussion. And since I was attempting to offer as many viewpoints as possible on how victims and the persons close to them experience and deal with such a dreadful ordeal, I needed the perspective of both my couples in order to best explore the full range of possibilities.

But Love’s Magic is also a love story. These four men have each found someone who has become… or is becoming… the most important person in their lives. For David and Nate, it’s an already established relationship that gets rocked to its core when Nate is attacked. For Colin and Joshua, it’s working their way past some incredibly high, deep emotional barricades, particularly in Colin’s case, which make finding and keeping that relationship damn near impossible. And all of these issues revolve around the personal experience each of them has had with some form of abuse.

The four main characters in Love’s magic had to deal with assault and abuse, each in their own unique way, and no one of them handles it quite the way the others do. Each of these four men are stumbling toward their own healing and eventually share the best of what they’ve learned along the way with the other three. I needed every single one of these men in order to tell the story that needed to be told. Each of them saw the issue from a different perspective. But before they could find the healing they needed they each had to learn to see it through each other’s eyes.

I wanted to talk a bit about each of the four main characters.

Colin is the cop. He deals with every kind of assault on a daily basis as the man charged with finding and arresting the perpetrators of these crimes. But it also is a deeply personal issue for him for reasons which he will discuss with no one. There is pain buried deep within Colin that no ones sees, feelings he has suppressed for most of his life. But when Joshua cracks open his heart everything comes pouring out, and not all of it is good.

Joshua was abused as a child. He was physically assaulted by a drunken father who broke Joshua’s arm when he was eight. He knows what it’s like to be locked in a dark closet and left alone for hours with no food, no light, no help. He became a Doctor of Psychology in order to help others who had suffered as he had, but also to find his own healing. He could see more easily into Colin’s heart than he could into his own. And in helping the man he loved find healing, he also found healing within himself.

David was never physically abused. But he was assaulted emotionally and verbally by a cold and critical parent and grew up completely unable to believe in his own worth. These issues haunted him for most of his life and were the primary reason why his marriage failed. His father’s voice was still in his ears, directing his life through constant criticism of everything David did and became. The psychological damage David suffered kept him closeted for many, many years. His relationship with Nate led him to the therapy he needed and at least a partial healing.

Nate was never abused in any way. He had an almost ideal childhood. But he fell in love with a man whose self esteem had been badly damaged by a father’s coldness and constant criticism and had to learn how to cope with David’s resulting insecurities as their relationship grew. When Nate went to the rescue of a student who was under attack on the Tog, a park on the university campus, he was badly, though not critically, injured. The trauma he suffered then was the catalyst which eventually drew all four men together.

No two people experience life in the same way. It’s a unique journey for all of us. And when it comes to dealing with abuse in any form, and there are many, it often takes more than one perspective to lead us to the healing we need. Love’s Magic explores many of those pathways through the lives of four exceptional and dynamic men. I hope you’ll get to know them all. I think their stories will touch your heart.

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