Today I am so pleased to welcome Pat Henshaw to Joyfully Jay. Pat has come to talk to us about her latest release, Making the Holidays Happy Again. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

Today Pat is here providing answers to some of her most asked questions…

When did you know you wanted to write, and when did you discover that you were good at it?

As a child, I wanted to be either a painter or a writer. I would lie in bed at night and paint fabulous pictures in my mind or write a wonderful story. I still tell myself stories in my head at night. When I was in junior high school, I wrote an essay that won a prize. I knew at that point that I would some day be the writer I dreamed of as a younger kid.

If you could sit down with other writers, living or dead, who would you choose, and what would you ask them?

My life has been pretty amazing, actually. I’ve met quite a few writers and authors since I started in this business, but even with that background there are still authors living and dead I’d want to meet. I’d love to give a tea party for Jane Austen, the Brontes, Emily Dickinson, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, even though I know they probably wouldn’t get along and it might turn into either a very quiet affair or a shouting match. A night at a bar with J. M. M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Dylan Thomas, and Arthur Conan Doyle would be a night to remember—probably raucous and profane. At any rate, instead of sitting down with one author, I’d rather put together a social event with a variety of writers and sit back and watch and listen.

Other than home, where do you like to write? Why?

I love funky coffee and tea shops, ones with local art on the walls where students and writers and readers hang out. Some of my favorite of those used to be Dantorels, New Helvetia, and Gretas here in Sacramento. But all have either changed hands or closed over the years, and the new crop of places seem to be more upscale and desperately trying to be sophisticated. The closest I can find these days is the coffee shop in downtown Pacific Grove, but even that has a more polished edge than I would like. Being in a visually stimulating and art enriched room with people engaged in creating is my ideal.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

Don’t give up. I know this is a cliché, but as they say, a cliché is a cliché for a reason: It’s usually true. I’ve written for publication most of my adult life. Even when I was teaching, I was writing book reviews for Publishers Weekly and other magazines and newspapers. When print venues dried up, I switched to online ones like All About Romance. I’ve been apprenticing to become a novelist my whole life. But at some point after getting decades of rejection and a horrific agent experience, I lost the excitement of sending out work and took a hiatus of a few years. I finally broke out of the doldrums and slowly wrote and self-published a novel. Now I have a solid backlist and am writing again. So I would give myself two pieces of advice: Don’t give up. Don’t get so discouraged.

What are you working on now?

Currently, I’m working on a paranormal gay romance novel: Into the Dark Night is the story of how accountant Gregory dies and finds happiness as a ghost guide who leads lost souls into the afterlife. Even his love life is better in death than it was in life when he meets his ghostly boss Ford, who died as a medieval crusader. Together they must find a way to defeat a ghostly menace that targets children while getting used to new additions to Ford’s ghostly staff.

Do you have any questions for me? If so, leave them here, and I’ll answer them. Thanks for reading this!

Blurb

Blacksmith Butch has secretly loved his best friend, science nerd Jimmy, since grade school. Now their shops in Old Town Seven Winds, California, are only doors from each other.

They’re about to turn thirty, and Butch refuses to wait another day to make a decision: propose to Jimmy and start the family he’s always wanted or forget his dream to avoid risking their friendship.

Why can’t the choice be as easy as creating decorative ironwork in his forge?

Bio

Pat Henshaw:

1. Is a she, not a he.
2. Writes MM romances.
3. Has interviewed Arlo Guthrie, Big Bird, Fred Rogers, Liberace, and Vincent Price.
4. Has lived and worked on all three US coasts and in the middle of the country, too.
5. Has been a reviewer, costumer, librarian, and teacher.
6. Has ridden an elephant, touched the pyramids, and stood at the edge of a volcano.
7. Believes love is essential to everyone’s happiness.

She wants you to remember: Every day is a good day for romance!