Welcome to New Faces, where you will meet the newest authors on the romance scene. This week, we're pleased to introduce Jean Brashear, whose new category romance THE BODYGUARD'S BRIDE is an October SSE. We know you'll enjoy getting to know Jean!

Tell us about yourself.

I'm a 5th-generation Texan whose father was a sheriff and mother is a nurse. I've been married to my own romantic hero for 28 years now (I know lots of writers say that, but it's no cliche for me--I would never have made it this far in this insane venture without his constant and unflagging support.) We have a son who's in college and a daughter who's graduated from college and married--both of them truly good souls and interesting people...not that I'm biased.

Are you coming to romance writing from another job?

I was in real estate when I started writing, but now I'm a full-time writer.

What led you to write romance?

I love romance...it's very much in tune with my view of the world. As a matter of fact, when I finally came out of the closet and admitted what I was doing, my daughter laughed and said, "It's perfect" because I'm renowned in the family for wanting happy endings in my books and movies. She's never let me forget how upset I was at the end of "Thelma and Louise." She loves me even though I'm a wuss.

It's surprising to me, though, that I'm writing contemporary romance. I was always a lover of historicals--still am. Nothing like a big, juicy historical read to make me happy. Had I ever thought I'd write anything, I would have assumed historicals would be what I'd write. Go figure. The book that first made me love contemporaries was LUCKY'S LADY by Tami Hoag--I stumbled across it in the library and just ate it up.

I didn't actually know I wanted to be a writer until three and a half years ago, though now it's as important as breathing to me. I've been a voracious reader since childhood, practically growing up in the library in my small town, but I never dreamed I'd one day see my name on a book. It was visceral thrill the day I first saw my cover art...I felt this shiver deep within me, just seeing my name as it would appear on the cover of a real, live book. I may be a writer, but I truly don't have the words for what that moment meant to me.

I never took any writing courses beyond the required English classes (more than a few years ago), and I still haven't finished college (my son is about to pass me and is flaunting it.) From time to time, people would tell me that I wrote wonderful letters, but I still never took that thought beyond the "someday" land where all of us tuck our dreams while we're in the midst of raising families.

But one day, this wonderful man I'm married to engaged me in one of those "What do we do with the rest of our lives?" conversations as we looked a year down the road toward the graduation from high school of our youngest child. I made the chance remark that I'd always thought I'd feel so proud of myself if I wrote a book. A man adept at the bottom line, he simply said, "So why don't you?"

Uh-oh. Busted. He made it even simpler. At the time, we ran our real estate business together, just the two of us. We were back on solid ground, but just barely, after the Great Texas Real Estate Depression of the '80s. So it was a not inconsiderable sacrifice for him to offer to do without me each morning for a couple of hours to try to write, but that's what he did.

I'd never written anything novel-length, and I hadn't written fiction. I had no idea if I could do it, but I uncovered two handwritten pages I'd jotted down years before while on vacation in the mountains and started building on that storyline. I had no idea what I was doing--I just wrote. But six weeks later, I had written 248 pages and typed "The End." I had a story, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and they seemed to hang together.

It was a love story, sprinkled with intrigue (the debris of all the spy thrillers I'd devoured over the years, I'm certain.) I screwed up my courage and asked a friend whom I knew read romances if she would read it and tell me honestly what she thought, then suffered the tortures of the damned until she finished.

She loved it--but then, she loves me and has a generous heart. I knew it wasn't the definitive judgment, but at least I knew that maybe I was onto something.

Ah, for the innocence of those days, when the stories just poured out of me and I had no idea what I SHOULD be doing. I was a novelist virgin, as one of my published friends called me, still innocent and undefiled. I just wrote and wrote, but in my off moments, I began to research the publishing business, trying to understand what it took to get a book in print.

The Age of Innocence came to a grinding halt--mercifully, in stages. I was too naive to see it in its full, malevolent glory, this business I'd decided to tackle. Also mercifully, as the size of the task began to be revealed to me in the shape of my first form rejection letter for a book which I now understand richly deserved it, I decided to make a five-year commitment to this venture. I swore that I would work hard, try all kinds of scary things, learn all I could, and write and write and write--and not allow myself to think seriously about giving up until five years had passed. Even more fortunately, I announced that commitment out loud, to friends and family.

So I neatly trapped myself. Five years seemed an eternity then, especially since I began to get encouragement from the first about my talent. That was before I knew it could take five months before an editor's workload allowed a look at your submission, if you were lucky.

Before I sold, at each rough spot, my husband or kids reminded me, "You said five years."

But I lied. I really meant five days, maybe five weeks--five months at the outside. It couldn't possibly take longer than that, right?

Right. Back to the (ugh) character-building. This business is one gut-check after another, and it never ends. I went to my first writer's conference and almost quit in total despair. But I remembered my vow and on the way home, I got the idea for my second ms., which won the Maggie. It looked really promising for several months that I might sell that one, but then the editor who'd asked for a ton of revisions said yes, I'd done everything she'd asked and done it well but--she'd changed her mind. Needless to say, I was devastated.

But I kept writing, both single-title and long category, most of which has yet to see an editor's desk because I write faster than the system can process it. By the time I sold my first book after two years, I'd written 9 novels and seven proposals. I keep thinking I'll pull them out and send them off, but my skills keep growing and I keep wanting to charge on to the next idea and not go back to spiff those up. Maybe someday.

I was fortunate enough to be taken on by a marvelous agent who made an exception for me and took on an unpublished author, something she hadn't done in years. This woman is wonderful--she believed in me even when I didn't believe in myself. She hung in there with me for a year before I sold.

I had placed second in the Maggie the next year after winning, with the book that became my upcoming first release, THE BODYGUARD'S BRIDE. But it was still months before I went under contract, months of agonizing and trying to hang in there, as we all must. The week before I sold it, I got two rejections (bracketing my birthday, no less) on a single title that was, at the time, the best thing I'd ever written. It was incredibly discouraging and I was probably as close to quitting as I'd ever been. But I forced myself to keep writing and was literally finishing up another ms. when The Call came.

The moral of this story is: NEVER give up. In an instant, everything can change. One minute you're lower than a snake's belly--then the phone rings, and you're over the moon. Persistence and stamina are every bit as important as talent, IMO. Lots of talented writers fall by the wayside, both before and after publication, because they cannot survive the emotional battering this business deals out liberally.

I've never gone the critique group route. I tried a couple of times, but it didn't work for me. I do get feedback, but not during the process, usually--I wait until the whole thing is written. I think it's easy to lose your way in listening to others too much and to lose your voice. It's very difficult to stay true to your vision if you're trying to satisfy others on every page as you compile it. But that's just me.

But other writers have been wonderful to me. Stella Cameron has been a godsend. She picked me out of a charity critique for the Oklahoma City bombing victims and called me to say that I had real talent and to ask what I was doing with it. To this day, I consider her the angel on my shoulder.

Donna Kauffman has been a constant friend, strong shoulder, and when needed, lecture-giver. Peggy Moreland lives nearby and has been a wonderful friend and has educated me a lot about the business.

Who are your influences as a writer?

I read widely, not just romance, though it's my favorite. I love what Stella, Donna, and Peggy write, and Nora Roberts is a storyteller I deeply admire. I love Susan King, Eileen Charbonneau, Justine Davis/Dare, Pat Gaffney, Eileen Dreyer, Tami Hoag, Lisa Gardner, Christine Flynn, Christine Rimmer, Marilyn Pappano, Elizabeth Grayson...I know I'm missing important people whose work I adore and I apologize right now.

Non-romance writers I love include Elizabeth Berg, Pat Conroy, Shelby Hearon, Anne Lamott. I'm an old Robert Ludlum junkie and have spent my time with Tom Clancy, too. Anne McCaffrey, Stephen Donaldson, Colette, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, Dale Brown, Ken Follett, and the sainted Rosamund Pilcher...I read all over the map.

What does your family think of having a romance author in their midst?

They're wonderful--I thank my lucky stars for all of them. My mother and my mother-in-law should be on the payroll--no one gets in their presence without hearing what a wonderful writer I am. My mother had back surgery recently but still had the presence of mind, even in extreme pain, to hand out bookmarks to every hospital staffer like there was no tomorrow.

My kids are extremely supportive, even though neither is a romance fan. They say they're very proud of me and it's a great feeling because I respect them both so much. My husband, bless him, has nicknamed himself "The Shovel Man." He says he never knows now, each day when he comes home, if he's going to need to scoop me off the floor or scrape me off the ceiling. But he's given me constant, unflagging support in this wild hair of mine.

It was kind of funny the day my daughter finally found out what I was doing. She was off at college and my husband calls and says, in this hushed tone, "Seneca, I don't know how to tell you this...your mother has imaginary friends." My son loved it that I started writing when he was about to leave home because I wasn't clinging to his leg as he left...more like "Huh? You're leaving? Okay...back to the story."

I also have a wonderful cadre of friends who've been a true blessing. My dear friend and walking partner has listened to more war stories than any human should have to bear, but she still walks with me every morning--what a woman. I owe her.

I wish I could dedicate the first book to all of them, but they needed room for the story. The dedication on this first one had to go to my husband, no contest. He's loved me through thick and a lot of thin, every step of the way. Since Silhouette doesn't give you much space for the dedication, I need to sell a lot more books--I have a lot of people who've been there for me who deserve recognition.

Tell us about plans for future books.

I just finished writing my second book for Silhouette Special Edition. It has a working title of SHARING SECRETS but will likely be changed. It's very different from BODYGUARD. Which is, of course, what every writer wants to do--play on a lot of fields, not be boxed into one. I'm getting incredible reviews on BODYGUARD and hope that readers who like it will enjoy seeing me stretch in other directions just as much.

This book is the beginning of a trilogy called THE LEGACY OF MORNING STAR. The first book is the story of a woman who suddenly finds out that her late father's whole life was a lie when she's bequeathed a house in a place she never heard of, by the husband of the only woman her father ever loved--at the expense of that woman's son. Needless to say, Boone and Maddie have some things to work through.

Good luck, Jean, and we'll be looking for that next SSE! In the meantime, read our review of The Bodyguard's Bride.

August 28, 1998