Ms. James has released her latest book Let It Go which is recommended for anyone interested in a great novel. The rest is history.

1. What inspired you to write Let It Go?

Let It Go was two-fold for me. I had recently experienced my own divorce. As most any creative type, I remedy negative experiences by writing or creatively purging my way through them. Also, I wanted to try my hand at a strictly contemporary romantic. All of my books have a love story. However, they often mix genres (i.e. The Boots My Mother Gave Me – women’s fiction, coming of age, contemporary romance & Vigilare Trilogy – supernatural thriller with some steam).

The Boots My Mother Gave Me, my first book and an Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Quarter Finalist is quite heavy in terms of subject matter. It’s about a young girl who overcomes an abusive childhood while coming of age. Even the Vigilare trilogy is quite dark with its mixture of graphic novel grit and crime drama suspense. The Vigilare’s primary targets are pedophiles and rapists. It’s an homage to vigilante films such as Boondock Saintsand The Punisher.

Having disclosed all of that, it was nice to sit down and write about something, such as divorce, which can be quite dark — giving it a positive turn around. Every story I write has some light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how heavy handed it begins.

2. What is the plot of Let It Go?

Let It Go is a feel-good contemporary romance with some steam about two divorcees learning to let go of ‘relationships past’ baggage and move on with hopeful hearts.

3. There are certain elements in the mainstream media promoting
romance novels that are based on the culture of death, tragedy, and
gothic culture. What sets Let It Go apart from the mainstream romance
novels?

Let It Go is a very ‘real’ contemporary romance. It’s true to life, and in fact inspired by personal experience. It’s not full of shocking twists and angst. It’s a simple, light and endearing love story about embracing second chances. It is devoid of the signature bad boy or the broken soul who needs fixed. Let It Go is a mature contemporary romance that spotlights the good guy, or man shall I say. Maybe that’s a reflection of my age…lol. I gave up on bad boys long ago. As a thirty-something year old woman, I most enjoy a man who comes to a woman correct. One she doesn’t have to work to change. There is nothing hauntingly needy about my hero and heroine. Nothing forcing them together or apart. They do not ‘need’ each other. ‘Want’…now that’s a total different affection, they surely explore.

4. The Boots My Mother Gave Me was set to music. Is there a
possibility that Brooklyn James may set Let It Go to music and/or
convert it into a film and/or TV miniseries?

There will not be a soundtrack toLet It Go. It’s not that complicated a read…lol…to require a soundtrack to set the emotional groundwork connected to particular scenes, such as in The Boots My Mother Gave Me. However, we’re working on the original music soundtrack to our next novel, Jolie Bonde, set in New Orleans and featuring a remake of the traditional Cajun waltz by the same name (Jolie Blonde). Much like ‘Boots,’ Jolie Blonde is a conglomeration of coming of age/women’s fiction/contemporary romance novel. There’s something about coming of age stories to me. They seem to lend themselves nicely to my musical inspiration. Maybe it’s the time in one’s life, where everything, including emotions come together and flourish. I find those types of tales to simply beg for accompanying original music soundtracks.

5. How long did it take you to write Let It Go?

I would say it took a good, solid month to draft the manuscript. Then you’re looking at another three weeks of editing thereafter. And another week of ebook formatting before it was published. All in all, roughly two months from start to finish.

6. Will you be promoting Let It Go in America and the world?

We’re promoting it on Amazon currently, which surely includes the world! We’ll have it up on Smashwords, iPad, B&N, Diesel Books, etc. by the end of this week. If ebook sales are relevent, we’ll consider releasing it in paperback later in the year for several brick and mortar book signings we’re ligning up for the fall and into the holiday season.

7. What lessons should the reader learn from Let It Go?

I think readers will take away a few key points from Let It Go:

1. Relationships/marriages come and go, much like the seasons of life. Not all of us will achieve happily ever after.

2. It’s okay to love and lose. There will be other loves. Stronger loves. More companionable loves. Not all of us have or manage to find our soul mate the first, second or even third go round.

3. Love is energy. It shapes and shifts and transfers. It never ceases to amaze me how much we can love an individual until we fall out of love with them. Then we contemplate what it was about them that we ever fell in love with in the first place! Love is energy. It can transfer from one person to another, simply with a different affection, a different appreciation. Each time it shifts, our wounded hearts allowed to believe in its power yet again.

8. In Let It Go, you talk about letting go of the past. What about
people who survived a divorce, meet their first love, fall in love,
and remarry? There have been cases like the one mentioned that have
succeeded.

Yes, I actually know of a few people who have remarried each other post divorce. Their second time around proving more successful than the first. I attribute that to where one is in their life in certain moments in time. We want different things in our twenties than we do in our forties, and so on. Maybe the first time a couple gets married, they’re not quite sure who they are or what they want. Maybe they have some room to grow, evolve. It would make sense that if those two souls meet up down the road and still share a love or an affection for one another, that the second time around could be more fruitful. Chances are they have grown. Lived a little bit. Figured out what they do and don’t want, out of life and from a mate. I think we get better at checklists as we get older. Those ‘must-haves’ in a partner. We learn to define them, acknowledging our worth and refusing to accept anything less. Whereas, when we’re younger, we don’t necessarily think so logically.

9. What is your advice to those who lost a loved one to death,
divorce, or break up and decide that loneliness and not falling in
love is the best option? Does Let It Go deal with these people?

The mother to the Bondurant sisters (Buffy Bondurant) is actually dealing with that circumstance in Let It Go. Her husband (the girls’ father) has been passed for five years, but Buffy cannot seem to throw herself back out into the dating arena. She married her husband at a time when marriage was everlasting and divorce was not an option…at least for her. So, it’s difficult for her to let go of her husband’s memory and carry on in the romance department. Savannah and Brady are not the only ones who let it go. And that’s the root of this novel, it is filled with a supporting cast, each and every one with their own letting it go to do.

Some reviewers have cited that their favorite part of the book (second to Brody and Savannah, of course) was watching the entire family of Bondurant women come face to face with thir own relationship obstacles and finding a way to let them go. Whether it’s the widow Elizabeth (Buffy), the seemingly happily married Evangeline (Vangie), the staunchly single Jacqueline (Jac) or the newly divorced Savannah…all of these women share experiences most readers can relate to.

10. I have to ask this based on your being a Nurse. After all, Nurses
are psychological healers. Are there any nursing aspects in Let It Go?

Maybe ‘nursing’ a broken heart…lol. Really, there is a lot of nurturing in Let It Go, which is what I consider nursing to be. Mother’s nurture/nurse all of the time. In Let It Go, Brody and Savannah ‘tend’ to or nurse one another’s hearts for a second chance at love. Also, the Bondurnat women are lifetime nurses in that they are constantly checking in with each other, bonding and nurturing…albeit in very different platforms and deliveries. So, in that sense, I would say there are some nursing aspects to Let It Go.