Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes

While Snowbound

Date: May 16, 2018

Author: Bobbi Holmes

I can only think of one band where I know the band members first and last names. Can you guess which one it was? The Beatles. And while I was a much bigger Beach Boys’ fan than Beatles’ fan, don’t ask me to name the members of the Beach Boys.

I like music; I just don’t necessarily know the name of the band currently playing on the radio. As a teenager I never plastered rock star posters on my walls, nor did I squiggle hearts along with my favorite rock star’s name on my notebook.

Basically, I was clueless when it came to the who’s who in music.

I do remember attending a concert in junior high, and my girlfriend got me to stand up with her and scream, like they used to do for the Beatles. I lasted for about 30 seconds, and then sat back down, feeling like an idiot, while my friend continued to jump around playing the role of the star struck fan. Don’t ask me whose concert we were at; I don’t remember.

This bit of cluelessness on my part inspired the plot of While Snowbound. I wanted to write another standalone romance. I thought about a female character who was a little like me, one who didn’t read fan magazines or watch reality TV, and finding herself alone with the man voted the Most Sexiest Man of the Year. And when she is made aware of who he is—and listens to his music—she finds she doesn’t like it very much.

I had fun working on While Snowbound. I made the female protagonist an Indi writer, like myself. Her genre was strictly historical romance. I do remember one reviewer who got snarky about the fact this character wrote historical romance, claiming that genre was more a hobby for little old ladies. Actually, I chose historical romance writer because I wanted a character who knew more about history than current events. If she wrote something like YA, I would expect her to be less clueless about the rock star.

While Snowbound was the second book written in what became my Unlocked Hearts series, written under my Anna J. McIntyre pseudonym.

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After Sundown

Date: May 15, 2018

Author: Bobbi Holmes

Categories: Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes

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The summer between my Freshman and Sophomore year of high school I decided to write a book. At the time our family was living on Lake Havasu, and my summers were spent working at Havasu Palms’ small convenience store and marina. It could get a little boring working at the store, so I hauled my manual Royal typewriter to work with me and would sit behind the counter in my bathing suit, working on my manuscript when I wasn’t waiting on customers or stocking shelves. My friends inspired my characters. It was a mystery, sort of love story, about a bunch of teenagers, told by the family dog’s perspective. I called it The Privileged Ones.

My next manuscript was also a mystery, based on a screenplay I wrote for a college course. Characters in that book were college age. I used the same title for the book that I used for the screen play, which was, Mischief or Murder?

In my 30s and 40s I was a voracious romance reader. Favorite authors during that time included Julie Garwood, Judith McNaught, Jude Deveraux, Johanna Lindsey, and Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. Inspired by my favorite authors, I decided to write an adult romance. It’s setting was based on a fictionalized Havasu Palms. I called it, Desire at Chief’s Head

I may have finished The Privileged Ones, Mischief or Murder, and Desire at Chief’s Head, but they will remain unpublished. I think of them as my practice novels.

After finishing my first romance, I decided to start another one. I called it After Sundown. Life got in the way, so instead of finishing the book, I tucked the manuscript in a box and forgot about it.

Fast forward to 2012, and I have already published Lessons and The Senator’s Secret (which eventually became Coulson’s Lessons and Coulson’s Secret, books 3 and 4 in the Coulson Family Saga.) I decide to write a standalone romance under my Anna J. McIntyre pen name and dug out my unfinished manuscript.

The problem with After Sundown—which I didn’t realize at the time—it was influenced by many of the romances I had read years earlier—and romances had evolved, readers had changed, and frankly my male protagonist was more in line with those found in books 30 years earlier.

When my mother beta read the book, she told me she hated the male protagonist, Cole Taylor in the story. He could be something of a jerk. So, I toned him down, yet not enough. If you read its reviews, you’ll see many of the reviewers agreed with Mom. I personally saw Cole as a flawed individual who evolved, and while he did behave inappropriate early in the book—much of it was because of his life experiences—I thought he had redeemed himself by the end of the story. Unfortunately, a significant number of readers disagreed with me.

I may have a soft spot for Cole Taylor—but I’m afraid many of my readers didn’t. It’s not like everyone hated the book, some people actually gave it five stars.

I’ve no regrets writing After Sundown, and I have no desire to rewrite it to make Cole more likable to more readers. Cole Taylor simply is who he is, and I have moved on.

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Why we write what we write.

Date: May 14, 2018

Author: Bobbi Holmes

Categories: Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes

Comments: 1 Reply

I have published over thirty books. They’re not all live anymore. Several I’ve since unpublished.

Each book has a story. I’m not talking about the story the book tells, but the story behind why the book was written in the first place.

Recently I asked some of my fellow authors why they wrote the first book they ever published. Their answers were varied. Some authors were inspired to write because of an event or dream. Others saw it as a challenge or culmination of a long-held goal. One thing I learned, we don’t all write for the same reason. In fact, authors don’t necessarily write all their books for the same reason. I know I don’t.

I’ve decided to do a series of blogposts called Each book has a story. In each post I will be featuring one of my books. I won’t necessarily focus on the story the book tells, as much as why I wrote the book in the first place.

The first book I’m featuring is Motherhood, a book of poetry.

In 1982 my husband and I moved to the mountain village of Wrightwood, California. At the time we had a three-month-old daughter and a three-year-old son. We lived fulltime in Wrightwood for the next nine years. It was during those years I wrote most of the poems contained in my book, Motherhood.

The reason for writing the poems was fairly simple. I wanted to express my experiences as a mother—capture what I felt. As the years went by, I would jot down the poems that came to me.

I shared the collection with family members—my sister, mother, mother-in-law. The first books were pages reproduced on a copy machine and bound in a homemade quilted cover.

Years later, when my daughter Elizabeth attended the Art Institute, majoring in Graphic Design, she needed an idea for her senior project. We discussed various ideas, and she eventually decided to format my book of poems and design its cover and create graphics to accompany the poems. When she was finished, she self-published the book at Lulu for her class.

The project was a personal one and never intended as a commercial endeavor. Yet, I eventually created the eBook version and sold it, along with the paperback, online.

In Amazon its description reads: Motherhood a book of poems is a collection of whimsical prose, featuring the assortment of poignant experiences unique to women who have loved and nurtured sons and daughters. The range is broad, capturing the swiftness of time, moments of quiet, times of chaos, frantic fear, yet most of all, unconditional love.

Today, my daughter, Elizabeth, is a professional freelance graphic designer, and her specialty is book covers. She designs my book covers and covers for many well-known New York Times Bestselling authors. You can see her work here.

Motherhood was her first book cover.

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