Joyce Sullivan 

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This month, The Romance Reader's Connection is pleased to present an interview with Joyce Sullivan, author of the Collingwood Heirs series for Harlequin Intrigue.

Melissa: Welcome Ms. Sullivan! I know from visiting your website that you were a private investigator before you became a published author. I am fascinated to know how you got started as a P.I. Also, could you share with our readers what initially prompted you to make the career change from P.I. to an accomplished writer of romantic suspense?

Joyce: I studied criminal justice at California State University, Long Beach with an emphasis in Security Administration. My first job out of college was with a security and investigations company. Part of my administrative duties included supervising the private investigators. I would often look at their case files and say, "Why don't you try this?" My boss noticed I had a natural aptitude for investigation and suggested I become a licensed private investigator and tackle some cases myself.

Melissa: What kind of cases did you work on as a PI?

Joyce: Primarily missing children investigations--only custodial abductions, not stranger abductions. I discovered I had an aptitude for this kind of case because in custodial abductions someone in the abducting parent's family KNOWS where the child is and isn't telling. My challenge was to learn so much about the abductor's family and friends and find a way to infiltrate their lives and gain their confidence. We will tell strangers on the bus, in the mall, on the beach, in our fitness class, very personal information that we will not tell our best friend or other family members. I was usually THAT stranger or I would develop a ruse to get the information by some other means. The trick to developing a successful ruse is research and thoroughly backgrounding the people in the abductor's life.

Mitch in OPERATION BASSINET approached Riana Collingwood's abduction as if she were taken by someone known to the family i.e. someone who wanted to punish Ross Collingwood.

I also did locates (finding people for various reasons usually having to do with probating wills) and some undercover work. Companies or individuals having a problem, would hire me to go in and find out what was really happening.

Melissa: Do you miss doing PI work?

Joyce: I'm a PI everyday when I'm writing! I not only get to make up the cases, but I plant all the clues and the red herrings. And so far I have had a one hundred percent success rate, which can only happen in fiction!

Melissa: What do you like most about writing for the Harlequin Intrigue line?

Joyce: I love the challenge of placing characters in situations in which falling in love is the most dangerous thing emotionally that they can do. They are not only battling external forces of evil, but internal forces, too.

Melissa: On your website you state that the inspiration for the Guardian and his island fortress is the Boldt Castle located in the Thousand Island region of the St. Lawrence Seaway. What was the inspiration for the circumstances surrounding the Collingwood Heirs in the beginning of each story?

Joyce: To be a writer, you have to be a good listener. A good observer. I like connecting with people, learning about their lives and the choices they've made. Their regrets. I watch talk shows where people share their life experiences. All this "information gathering" feeds my muse and the storyteller within. Sometimes I will feel a chill or a contracting pain in my chest when I hear something and it's like my storyteller has reached out and grabbed the pain or lesson of that experience and starts pondering, "What if ....?"

In the case of THE BUTLER'S DAUGHTER (Harlequin Intrigue #722), I was talking to a woman I greatly admired about the guilt she feels over her brother's death. I won't break her confidence over the details of the incident, but her father never hugged her, never showed her any emotion because he blamed her for what happened. This woman never confronted her father about his feelings. That's how THE BUTLER'S DAUGHTER was born. I wondered, "Why would a heroine put her life on hold and risk her life to care for this baby?" And the answer was guilt. She did it because her father asked her to and she wanted to win back her father's love. So many of our actions everyday are guided by guilt. Juliana had a lot to learn, she had to admit her needs to both her father and the hero to escape being a passive participant in life.

OPERATION BASSINET (Harlequin Intrigue #726) grew out of THE BUTLER'S DAUGHTER. I had to create a scenario for what happened to that first baby and the plots between both books had to be connected. Since I worked on many missing children investigations, as a mother and a private investigator, my heart was solidly in Stef's predicament. How could we choose between a child of our body and a child of our heart? The challenge of that book was finding a happy ever after ending that felt credible to the reader. That's why Hunter and Juliana play such a strong role in book two. If Hunter had never met Juliana and learned about love and sacrifice, he would not have been able to make the choice he did at the end of the story.

I had hoped to write a third book for the series about Hunter's sister Brook, her three-year-old son and her ex-husband who are taken hostage on Brook's 30th birthday in her family's flagship hotel in NYC. The hotel is featured in the other books. The hero is stripped naked and put on trial for his life in front of a news camera by the villain. To me it was a fascinating situation, dissect a painful marriage and heal it, and figure out how the hero and heroine would discover the villain's identity and rescue themselves, their son and 30 other hostages before the villain punished the hero for his crimes by executing the heroine. But alas, the powers that be thought I was pushing the envelope too far for Intrigue readers. If any of you want to write letters and beg for a third book, hey, I'm okay with that. <g>

Melissa: Your website provides a great deal of advice for fledgling authors, you are also a writing instructor with Algonquin College, in your experience, what is the number one mistake writers make in their quest to be published?

Joyce: Not analyzing the line or market they want to write for. If you want to write an Intrigue, read Intrigues, study them, and learn what kind of plots are popular.

Melissa: What was the last book you read for pleasure? Has there been any one author who has influenced your writing the most?

Joyce: Alexander McCall Smith's, "Morality for Beautiful Girls." My mother shared it with me. It's about the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana. There were a lot of fascinating and simple truths in that book.

I can't honestly say that there has been any one author who has influenced my writing the most. I think everything I've ever read has influenced me. It's very rare that I "toss a book" aside. I'm more likely to keep reading and analyze why the publisher bought this story. A good story has thousands of components. The trick is learning what your strengths are and playing to your strengths.

Melissa: With respect to your writing, what character or book are you most proud of, so far? What book has been the most difficult for you to write?

Joyce: I'm most proud of URGENT VOWS (Harlequin Intrigue #571). The counterfeit expert who inspired me to create Quinn McClure (the counterfeit expert hero) told me that the technical aspects of the story were so well-crafted that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police could use it as a manual for investigating counterfeit crimes. I think the stakes are higher in the story when the reader knows you've made an effort to create a credible storyworld.

The most difficult book I've ever written is THE BABY SECRET (Harlequin Intrigue #546), January 2000. It was a book about the kidnappings of executives in family-owned corporations across Canada. There were a number of victims, including the hero, and keeping all the kidnapping stories straight and making sure that each story revealed one more clue as to the perpetrators was a real challenge.

Melissa: What can readers expect to see from you in the future?

Joyce: HER ROYAL BODYGUARD, which will be an Intrigue release in June 2004. It's a princess-in-training story and a departure from the traditional tone of an Intrigue because it's a romantic comedy. But I was fascinated by the concept of what it would be like to suddenly find out you were a princess. I'm sure every woman on earth fantasized about being Princess Diana. I've put the heroine a bookish surf diva under tremendous pressure. Not only is she a princess, but she is being forced into marriage to the prince of the neighboring country. You can dress up a woman in beautiful clothes and jewels, but you can't hide her true nature. That is a woman's jewel. So how do you shine when the world is telling you how to dress, how to behave, and every gaffe you make is headline news?

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