Bonus post - An interview with CJane Elliott

Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing CJane Elliott, author of There You Are.

Hi CJane, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.

Hi there! Thank you for having me on the blog today to share about my new novella, There You Are, which is the second book in the Wild and Precious series. There You Are picks up the story of Cody Bellstrom where we left him in Wild and Precious. He moves to Portland, Oregon to join a funk band and meets the man who is to become the love of his life, Phineas MacDonald. But they both have issues to work through before they can get to their happy ending.

By the way, those who have read my novella, Mercury In Retrograde, will recognize a cameo appearance of one of the main characters, Alex Harrison, toward the end of the book. It’s a short but key scene which proves to be a turning point for Cody.

Introduce us to characters from a work in progress.

These two characters are the MCs from my work in progress for Dreamspinner’s Dreamspun Desires line.

Jonathan Vallen is a poor little rich boy, an overweight dreamer who would much rather garden and play his harpsichord than be the business tycoon his father is grooming him to be after his older brother, who was supposed to take over the company, died a hero’s death in Afghanistan several years before. Jonathan’s good with numbers but terrible with people and worse with business transactions. He’s also gay, something he’s hidden from the world ever since his disastrous love affair with his music teacher when he was sixteen, which discovery ended the man’s career and had Jonathan go deeply into the closet, after telling his parents he’d made a mistake and wasn’t really gay. He struggles on, trying to become who his father wants him to be, deriving comfort from his flowers, his music, and memories of his beloved mother, who died a year before.

Marco Pellegrini has it all on the surface: he’s handsome, brilliant, and successful – the quintessential Alpha male. He’s had amazing business success for being only thirty, and is already a wealthy man. He lives in a penthouse in one of Boston’s swankiest apartment buildings and squires a stream of beautiful women to the many business and charitable functions he’s invited to. Marco’s gay but closeted, and he satisfies his urges with discreet trysts. When Marco lands the CEO job for Vallen Industries he sees it as simply one more step on the ladder to ultimate success he’s been climbing since he was seventeen and got a full ride to Harvard. Marco is a driven man, but no one in his current life knows what drives him. He came from poverty. His parents were Italian immigrants and struggled to keep food on the table for Marco and his seven brothers and sisters. Marco and his family were looked down on by the rich and privileged families in Boston such as the Vallens. Inside, Marco still carries the scars of being second best.

Thank you CJane and I'm sorry you couldn't stay longer but someone has to write all those books I like to read. *Csrefully pushes CJane towards a writing desk.*