Aloha to Joss Landry and MIRROR DEEP

The Hawaiian word of the day is

nanea - enjoyable, relaxed, at pleasure

Reading is nanea.

Maybe horseback riding is relaxing for you!  Enter Joss Landy and her debut novel, MIRROR DEEP.  Joss joins me today for a cozy chat ... from her bio,

Blessed with four children and five grandchildren, she resides in Montreal with her husband, a staunch supporter, and enjoys spending time biking, rollerblading, playing tennis, and swimming. She loves creating stories as she says they fulfill her need to think outside the box.

Kim:  We love international travel at SOS Aloha! Tell us about Montreal - what is your favorite sight, sound, and smell?

Joss:  Montreal is the beginning and end of the road, meaning that once you experience it, you tend to want to stay.    It’s formidable in its deep weather divides—hot and extremely spicy in summer while cold and nocturnal with an austerity profile in winter.   In fall, the best of all bright colors drip from its trees, and spring finds us groveling for each ray of sun smiling at the frozen earth.   My favorite time is summer, of course. The Grand Prix revs the season, starting summer with a wild spin around the tracks. The Jazz festival dances along the main arteries, complete with sounds of clarinets filling sidewalk cafes and underground lairs. The Just for Laughs festival, where authors like John Candy and Jim Carey became famous can be heard in a cloud of gaiety hovering over the city. The International fireworks represented by a different country every summer weekend, glows best from a small plane ride for a bird’s eye view of fountains and sparklers.   Montreal also houses the biggest underground city in the world. Possibly the most famous underground city is Montreal's RÉSO, used by more people than any other locale and is the largest underground city network in the world. (Wikipedia) 

Image by  Dickbauch  from Wikipedia

Actually you’re looking at a 32-kilometer network of shopping malls, office buildings, apartment towers, cultural centers, universities and civic institutions connected by subway lines and a sinuous network of underground passageways. On those brutal winter days when the thermostat plunges below -20 degrees Celsius, you can go to work, watch a movie, buy a baguette, attend a concert, go skating, visit the library and finally return home, all without venturing outdoors. 

Kim:  "Biking, rollerblading, playing tennis, and swimming" - do any of these activities help you find characters and plots for your writing? 

Joss:  If nothing else, they help me become a character I like to write about. Two things I enjoyed doing as a child. Play outside, and read books. While playing outside meant competing with boys at sport, and anything else they threw my way just so long as I won, reading a book meant that if I didn’t like the ending, or the name of a character, or what a character said, I would rewrite it. I won’t tell you about the many scenarios that run around in my head. 

Here's a serious biker for Ironman on the Big Island.

Kim:  3. Who or what prompted you to leap into the ocean of romance writing? 

Joss:  Romance is an ocean, I’ll grant you that; although, I consider myself more of a mystery or suspense writer. And, while I don’t believe any recipe should be devoid of salt, romance being the spice in all my books, I like the main ingredients to be more adventurous. I love books with twists and turns and many subplots and lots of foreshadowing. Think, P.D. James, John Grisham, Erich Segal. Those are the authors I like to read. I also like Danielle Steele, who is a master at crafting stories from stories.

Kim:  What inspired MIRROR DEEP? 

Joss:  My children said to never talk about the voices in my head. J Actually, this is how a story begins for me. And I don’t know what triggers it. I began to see Pierce chasing Kat on horseback, through the woods early morning. Then I see him secretly pining for her while she has no clue and no interest whatsoever. Actually a real drama takes over her life early on and she will need Pierce’s help to unravel a deep, dark mystery, not least of which is Pierce himself. 

… DANGER AND ROMANCE… 

Roll like thunder in Kat Bonner’s world, when a known felon comes to the ranch to drop a bomb about her past. Kat turns to Pierce for help, the same Pierce who bucks her every chance he gets … and whose feverish investigation lands them in trouble with the law and directly in the path of a serial killer.

Mystery deepens, fraught with wrong turns, bumbling detectives, old murders, and Kat’s doppelganger no one ever sees but her, just as she never sees the change in Pierce’s feelings toward her brewing, mounting, until she can no longer deny them. 

Here's the link to MIRROR DEEP on Amazon.

When a story hits me, I hunt the Internet to find the proper faces of the people I see and hear while their names come automatically, as does the title of the book. I write down everything that’s thrown at me, quickly like a fever, hoping the vein will remain long enough for me to sprout a main plot, and a whole bunch of little subplots. 

Only once I have found every picture, found them a location, built a house, landscape, office towers, and several character sheets for each person will I let the story grow. I find it easier to navigate a straight path this way, while allowing my characters free rein. They can do the darnedest things. 

You can reach me: josslandry.com and you may follow my blog. 

facebook.com/josslandry
facebook.com/josslandrymirrordeep
pinterest.com/josslandry.com
twitter.com/josslandry

Mahalo, Joss, for visiting us at SOS Aloha!   I am giving away a nanea gift pack with Hawaiian relaxing goodies to one randomly selected commenter.  To enter the giveaway,

1.  Leave a comment about relaxing - other than reading, what do you do to kick back?

2.  Comments are open through Saturday, January 19, 10 pm in Hawaii.  

3.  I'll post the winner on Sunday, January 20.

Mahalo,

Kim in Hawaii

H50 visit Lanai on horseback
"Ua Lawe Wale"
cbs.com