Julie N. Ford graduated from San Diego State University with a BA in Political Science and a minor in English Literature. In addition, she has a Masters in Social Work from the University of Alabama. Professionally, she has worked in teaching and as a Marriage & Family Counselor. She is the author of two women’s fiction novels, The Woman He Married and No Holly for Christmas, published in 2011. In addition, she wrote a romance/chick-lit novel, Count Down to Love, also published in 2011. Count Down to Love was a 2011 Whitney Award finalist. Her next novel, Replacing Gentry, is due for release April 9th, 2013.
Currently, she lives in Nashville, TN with her husband, two daughters and one hedgehog.
Do you have any advice for writers? Write because you love it, because the voices in your head won’t let you rest until you free them onto the page, because to stop is not an option. Keep writing when you get discouraged because even if you never make a dime off your work, the journey was well worth the effort.
Are there any new authors that have sparked your interest and why? Yes. I just read a book by Amy McNamara called Lovely, Dark and Deep. It’s a YA novel about a twenty-something girl suffering from depression after she watched her boyfriend die in a car accident. McNamara writes in first-person, present tense, which puts some readers off, but here I thought made the text very personal, thought provoking. Her writing style reads like prose. I felt like reading this novel made me a better writer.
What are your current writing projects now? My current WIP is a women’s fiction best described as The Graduate meets Steel Magnolias.
Have you ever considered anyone as a mentor? When I first started writing, I had no idea what I was doing. I had a story to tell and without another thought, sat down and started writing. As y’all can imagine, the finished manuscript was a hot, sizzling mess. My sister suggested that I contact a friend of hers who was/is a writer/editor—Heather B. Moore. Heather not only helped me clean up the text, but also became a good friend and mentor.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp? Whether we want to call it fate or God’s will, life has way of directing us down the proper path. If we’re able to learn from, and trust in the power’s that be, and allow a source greater than ourselves to lead us, sooner or later, we’ll end up right where we belong.
Did you learn anything from writing this book and what was it? With each book I write, I learn a bit more. Every editor brings varying strengths/lessons to be taught. With this book, I learned a lot about dialog tags. My tags aren’t perfect in Replacing Gentry but I’m doing much better with my current WIP. I also learned about secret societies (invented one of my own), graveyards, genetic engineering and the inner workings of the Tennessee legislature.
What was the hardest part about writing this book? I over-wrote this first manuscript by about 60,000 words. I’m not entirely sure how that happened (I have a sneaky suspicion that I may have been distracted by the release of three other novels in that same time period) but when I got to the end, I had A LOT of cutting to do. Then when I found an interested publisher, they wanted me to cut some more, and focus in on only one plot line. Long story short, I wrote this novel about three times. UHG! But in the end, all the work was worth it. I’m very happy with the result.
Can you tell us about your main character? Marlie is curious and tenacious to a fault. And as you can imagine, this combination gets her into a heap of trouble. She’s in over her head and still, she keeps digging.
Have you ever had writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it? I don’t usually get “writers block.” **Knocking on wood. Once I get going on a story, it usually rolls off my brain faster than my fingers can type it. Occasionally, however, I do get stuck on specifics like, how to show something, or proper plot sequencing. When this happens, I go for a walk. There is something about getting out of the house, the rhythm of my feet against the sidewalk that clears the cobwebs and allows all the scrambled pieces to fall into place. Most of the time, I’ll get it figured out about halfway through my walk and then I’m practically running the rest of the way so I can get home and write it down.
What made you want to be a writer? I’d always played with scenarios for stories and movies in my head but had never considered writing any of them down. In my second year of graduate school for a Masters in Social Work, I was diagnosed with Lymphoma. After enduring chemotherapy, I escaped with my life and an unrelenting desire to tell Josie’s (my first novel) story. The only thing I can surmise is that somehow the chemo had an effect on my creativity, kind of how a superhero will receive his/her powers after falling into a vat of toxic waste.
When Marlie agrees to attend a cadaver ball at Vanderbilt Medical School, she did not expect to actually see any cadavers. Or, that a strange apparition would issue her a chilling message.
Despite the cadaver's warning, Marlie is married a year later to Tennessee State Senator, Daniel Cannon, and living in a plantation-style mansion with two step sons. Add to the mix her growing suspicion that something is amiss with the death of Daniel’s first wife, Gentry; and newlywed Marlie is definitely in over her pretty Yankee head.
What begins as an innocent inquiry into her new husband’s clouded past, ends with Marlie in the midst of a dangerous conspiracy.
A modern twist on the classic Gothic romance novels of Rebecca and Jane Eyre, Replacing Gentry follows Marlie’s precarious journey as she learns the truth about the man she married.
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