Skip to main content

Interview with Jaycee Weaver part 2

I’m back with the second part of my interview with Jaycee Weaver!

Jaycees’ Bio:

Jaycee Weaver lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her awesome husband, three daughters, two crazy Shih Tzus, and a dwarf rabbit. When she’s not writing, she’s busy balancing the mom-wife life. Jaycee loves to read books in multiple genres, drink too much coffee (honestly, when are they going to make the coffee IV a real thing?!), sing, take landscape and floral photos, sew, cook, bake, and craft nearly anything. She considers herself a recovering perfectionist and sometimes hot mess. She does her best to live her faith in action, being open, honest, and real; letting God be Lord over the good, the bad, and the ugly even when it’s hard.

Camy here: Jaycee is one of the twelve authors participating with me in the Christian Contemporary Romance anthology, Save the Date, which releases September 15!

If you haven’t yet, be sure to preorder Save the Date for only 99 cents! The price will go up after the book releases.



Jaycee’s novella in the boxed set is Braver With You. We’ll be talking a bit about the book and also Jaycee’s family life.

And now, here’s me and Jaycee!

Tell us more about Braver With You, the novella that will be in the Save the Date anthology. How'd you come up with the story idea?

It's a funny story, actually. Within the anthology discussion group, one of our authors posted a ton of wedding dress-related ideas. I was burned out last fall and not feeling particularly creative until one of the ideas—and overbearing mother insisting the bride wear her old dress—started my wheels turning. I imagined a boy and girl who'd known and loved each other so long that their mothers had essentially planned their wedding from preschool. But what if that wedding wasn't the one they wanted? While looking at photos for further inspiration, I found a gorgeous shot of a bride running toward a hot air balloon, which is perfect because the tale is set in October when the city hosts the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Elements began to fall into place. What if Conrad is an adventurous sort, and he's always been the one to help Ashlyn find her courage? What if he's the reason she's able to stand up to her mother and fight for the wedding she wants? It's still a work in progress, but these are the questions that sparked my creativity again.

Now that I know more about your story, I can see how that book cover is so perfect!

Your heroine in Braver With You, Ashlyn, does yoga. Is there a cute story behind why she chose yoga for exercise?

Honestly, I haven't written much of this story yet, so I don't have a cute story! What I do know is that Ashlyn feels very trapped and yearns to be brave. With her inner turmoil and her overbearing mother, yoga is a wonderful outlet to keep her focused and centered.

I’ve only done a little yoga, but my husband has been doing it for a few years now, and he says the same thing, that it helps keep him calm and centered when work is very stressful.

What ministry do you do at your church or in your community? Why do you like doing it?

Everything I do is cyclical to fill a need or niche, so while right now I'm only an occasional greeter at church, I've taught Sunday school, sang on the worship team, run a church blog, been part of the elementary PTA board, volunteered in the classroom when the kids were little, among a host of other things. I love being involved wherever my kids are and wherever there's a need.

I think that’s fantastic! Our church’s deacons say that sometimes they just need someone to step up where there’s a sudden need.

What are your favorite TV shows?

I haven't really been able to focus on television in the last few years, but when I do, my tastes are eclectic! I love Virgin River, but my go-to streaming favorites are Doctor Who, Chuck, Psych, Gilmore Girls, and The Office (which I hated at first!).

I totally loved Chuck! I think I just like nerds.

If you adopted a chimpanzee, what would you name it and why?

I wouldn't. Primates creep me out. LOL!

Oops, sorry about that question!

You're off the hotseat! Any parting words?

Thank you so much for having me!

Camy here: Next week, I’ll post a knitting pattern for the yoga bag that Jaycee’s heroine Ashlyn uses in her novella, Braver with You, one of the books in our Christian Contemporary Romance anthology, Save the Date, which releases September 15! Preorder now to get 12 novellas for only 99 cents!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Brainstorm - character occupation

Captain's Log, Stardate 03.23.2009 Hey guys, I could use some help. In my current manuscript, The Year of the Dog , which is a humorous contemporary romance, I have a minor character, Eddie. He’s my heroine’s ex-boyfriend, and they’re on good terms with each other. He’s a bit irresponsible, but not so much so that he’s a complete loser. He’s got a very easy going attitude, he forgets to pay his bills sometimes, he’s friendly and charming. He’s adventurous and fun to be around, but he’s a little forgetful sometimes, and he tends to spend a little outside his income. I need an occupation for him. What would a charming, easy going, slightly irresponsible guy do for a living? He’s not too irresponsible, because otherwise readers will wonder what in the world my heroine saw in him to date him in the first place. She was attracted to his charm, his easy going attitude (her family’s uptight, and he was a nice contrast), and his adventurousness. But his forgetfulness and irresponsibility ...
64 comments
Read more

Window shopping

Captain’s Log, Stardate 03.14.2005 Knee update: I went to the doctor today for a checkup, and saw his assistant. I’ve been concerned because there’s still inflammation in my knee joint, and it’s been almost 4 months since the surgery. She said she’d talk to the doctor about it tomorrow and call me. Sometimes he suggests laying off the PT to see if that causes the inflammation to go away, but I don’t know if that will work because lately I’ve been pretty active outside of PT. At PT today, the therapist did ultrasound and some sort of electrical current on the joint. Hopefully that will make the inflammation start to go down. I’ll know by tomorrow, probably. Writing: Mt. Hermon conference starts this Friday! On Thursday night, I’ll be at the Santana Row Borders bookstore to help out (and hopefully learn a bit, too) at a booksigning for several of the ACFW authors who are attending Mt. Hermon . That should be lots of fun. I had a good brainstorming time at ...
Post a Comment
Read more

New book idea a la Captain Caffeine

Captain's Log, Stardate 04.14.2009 So my husband, Captain Caffeine, had lunch with a few friends a few days ago. And they asked about my writing, and if I’d been on Oprah yet. (Yeah, right) They then discussed NYT bestselling books, and why can’t Camy write a NYT bestseller. (Sure, let me just open a vein over a blank page and it’ll come right out.) So Captain Caffeine came home with ideas for my new NYT bestselling novel. First it starts with vampires, because Twilight is so hot. But not just any vampires. This one’s an Amish vampire. And he’s not just an Amish vampire, he’s a cop in disguise, infiltrating the Amish community to protect a witness. (Hmm, that storyline sounds familiar ...) But wait! There’s more! To add more conflict and stick with my brand of Asian fiction, we introduce the Tibetan monk! Who joins the Amish community to get away from the pressures of monkhood. But in reality, he’s protecting the Chinese princess on the run, trying to escape from her father’s Hong...
25 comments
Read more

Japanese language learning process in more detail

I blogged a few weeks ago that I’ve jumped back into my Japanese language learning after being lazy and letting it slide. I’ve been keeping my Japanese language study habit for about a month now, and I wanted to blog about my process in more detail. One thing I had noticed about my Japanese is that I tended not to do it if I left it to do at the end of the day. I realized that it was just like my exercise—if I didn’t do it first thing in the morning, it never got done. So I started doing my Japanese right after my exercise in the morning. I treated it like one of my “frogs,” as I read about in the book Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time . The book is based off of a Mark Twain quote: “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” It suggests doing your “frogs”—your important things that you’re likely to procrastinate doing—first thing in the morning in order to get it done, and ...
2 comments
Read more

Chinese Take-Out and Sushi for One

Captain’s Log, Supplemental My agent sent me an article from Publisher’s Weekly that discussed this incident: Chinese Take-Out Spawns Christian Controversy And here’s also a blog post that talks about it in more detail: The Fighting 44s This is Soong-Chan Rah’s blog: The PCS blog In sum: Apparently Zondervan (yes, my publisher), who has partnered with Youth Specialties, had put out a youth leaders skit that had stereotypical Asian dialogue, which offended many Christian Asian Americans. In response to the outcry, Zondervan/Youth Specialities put out a sincere apology and is not only freezing the remaining stock of the book, but also reprinting it and replacing the copies people have already bought. I am very proud of my publisher for how they have handled this situation. The skit writers have also issued a public apology . (I feel sorry for them, because they were only trying to write a funny skit, not stir up this maelstrom of internet controversy. I’ve been in youth work long enou...
39 comments
Read more