Marianna Jameson: An Introduction

Hi everyone! I’m Marianna Jameson, and I’m so delighted to have been invited to join the "Mariannes" blog! I wasn’t sure if I’d belong, since I haven’t written a romance novel in a few years. In fact, I only wrote two before I was sidetracked. Romantic comedies MY HERO and BIG TROUBLE came out in 2005 and 2006, and then the opportunity to write eco-thrillers with a celebrity co-author fell into my lap. I’ve been busy creating mayhem ever since!

The thrillers haven’t won as many awards as my romances (Holt Medallion, Aspen Gold, Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence, Anne Bonney Readers’ Choice, and Golden Quill) but readers have definitely noticed some resemblances to my romances. They are character-driven works featuring strong female leads, dark humor, and smart repartee—three things I love to find in any book I read, so naturally they’re in everything I write.

And writing thrillers hasn’t been without its own set of thrills for me as a writer. My first eco-thriller was CATEGORY 7, which wove together weather manipulation, spycraft, and political intrigue as a man-made hurricane aimed toward New York City wreaked havoc along the East Coast. That book, by the way, was mostly written before Hurricane Katrina—which some conspiracy theorists assert was man-made—hit the Gulf Coast. It also made the New York Times bestseller list, which was a very cool thing to happen to the first thriller I’d ever attempted. The second, FROZEN FIRE, tells the story of a billionaire up against eco-terrorists who destroy his undersea methane-mining operation and place the entire Caribbean, and the world’s climate, in danger. If that story line sounds a little familiar, it might be because you heard that the primary suspected cause of this summer’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster is undersea methane bubbles. You can find out more about that at my website: http://www.mariannajameson.com/ and in this blog post: http://www.ninc.com/blog/index.php/archives/research-becomes-reality that I wrote a few months ago.

My next eco-thriller, which will be released in July 2011, is DRY ICE. It is set in the driest, coldest, darkest, most remote spot in the world: the high central plain of Antarctica. That’s where TESLA is located, Flint AgroChemical’s secret Antarctic installation and the place where Flint scientists have cracked the code to controlling the world’s weather. And where the project’s sociopathic lead researcher has decided to hijack this latest game-changing corporate weapon and turn it against the agro-industrial giant, and the world at large. DRY ICE features scenes of epic destruction set in locations around the globe as international politics collide with bleeding-edge science and corporate espionage.

I really, really hope that I won’t be able to link that book with any real disaster! LOL

So, though I started out writing romance, for the last few years I’ve been concentrating on doing all kinds of research that I never thought I’d be doing—on chemicals, weather manipulation technology, sociopaths, murder techniques, weapons real and imagined, etc.—while also destroying environments, killing bad guys, and torturing my heroes and heroines. I’ll admit I’ve got a few more of those books in the pipeline, but I’ve decided to give myself a little professional “vacation” by going back to my roots: romance. I’m balancing my writing time between my next thriller and a romantic women’s fiction novel that I’ve just started. I’m so excited about it. No details yet, no title, and no deal finalized, but the brain is churning, the words are flowing, and the ooh-la-la heat is getting turned up!

I’m looking so forward to making readers laugh again! Don’t get me wrong, I love it when people tell me they can’t watch the weather reports quite the same way since reading my eco-thrillers, but I still get a big kick out of readers telling me they’ve tracked down my romances and laughed and cried along with my early heroines.

So that’s what I’m looking forward to doing again: making readers laugh (you can never have too much laughter in life—especially these days!) and maybe cry just a little (release is good, right?). And I am really looking forward to being part of this wonderful group blog of All Day All Night Romance Divas: The "Mariannes" of Romance!!