Fun Facts for “Falling for Jillian Ashley”

Factoid One
I conceived the idea for this book while I was in the midst of writing the second book, A Matter of Trust: A Carlsbad Village Lesbian Romance
The idea came to me as I was taking a long walk around Carlsbad one evening. It struck me as so good that I immediately stopped walking, took out my iPhone and started typing the concept into the Notes app.
I was so in love with the idea, in fact, that I actually couldn't help my mind from writing the story: I began imagining scenes, characters, bits of dialog...everything! It excited me that much!

Factoid Two
Originally, I was planning that the 3rd book in the series would be about Sienna. But when the concept for FFJA came to me, I knew Sienna wasn't the right MC and that Amy would be the better choice.

Factoid Three
I loved this concept so much that for a period of about two months I worked on writing "Falling for Jillian Ashley" while also writing "A Matter of Trust."
What I would do was, spend one week working on AMoT and then the next week working on FFJA.
Eventually, because I was farther along with AMoT, I decided to put FFJA to the side in order to focus exclusively on AMoT and get it released.

Factoid Four
Poor Sienna!
After bumping Sienna from being the star of the 3rd book, I then planned on the 4th book being about her.
But when I finished the first draft of FFJA, I realized I had a problem: Nowhere in FFJA is Sienna mentioned and it has been the Sabrina Kane pattern that the MC of the next book has at least a minor role in the latest book. I thought that perhaps I could work Sienna in during my revisions but it never happened. There just wasn't a suitable place for Sienna in this book.

Factoid Five
Controversy! :-)
Once I started writing FFJA in earnest, I tweeted that I was including a sex on the beach scene.
Wow!
I got a lot of responses--on Twitter and via email--from fellow women telling me how having sex on the beach is such a bad idea. How it always sounds like fun at first but then all that sand gets into the most inconvenient places thus making it not worth the trouble.
What little faith in me! :-)
Of course I knew about the sand problem! And of course I accounted for that in my sex on the beach scene, writing it in such a way that sand was taken out of the equation.
In the end, I silenced my critics. :-)
(If you haven't read the book, you'll have to do so to find out how.)

Factoid Six
I was very nervous about the introduction of the character Max.
Let's face it, the vast majority of lesfic books do not feature a prominent male character and so I was unsure how Max would be met within the lesfic community. Also, I had never written a male character before (at least one who is so integral to the story; William in Nothing But A Fling: A Carlsbad Village Lesbian Romance doesn't count IMHO) and wasn't sure I could pull it off.
In the end, I did what a lot of daughters would do in my situation: I based him on my Dad. :-)

Factoid Seven
This is the only book in the series (so far) in which, at the very end, I announce the name of two main characters that will be featured in the next book.

Factoid Eight
Upon first conceiving the idea for FFJA, my intent was to have Sally continue the ruse of being Jillian Ashley for most of the book, only being forced to reveal the truth to Amy towards the end. This, naturally, would have led to a great deal of angst and the archetypal third-act-breakup which is standard in lesfic.
However, once I started writing it, I determined that I didn't want to be so cliche and obvious. I also wanted to continue putting cracks in the lesfic mold.
Thus Sally's seaside confession less than halfway through the novel.

Factoid Nine
This was the first of my novels which I made available for beta reading by a curated group of fans.

Factoid Ten
Max's original last name was Moore. I changed it to Tremont at the last moment in another nod to the Bronx roots of my Dad.
One of these days, I should start including Connecticut references in my books in a nod to my Mom's roots. Unfortunately, Connecticut just isn't as interesting as NYC. (Sorry to all my Connecticut readers. :-) )

Bonus Factoid
The working title I had while writing the manuscript was "Meeting Jillian Ashley." But then I realized that that would break my pattern of four-word titles.