TBR welcomes Pauline Baird Jones

TBR: Welcome to TBR, Pauline Baird Jones. Will you share a little bit about yourself?
Pauline: I began my writing career penning romantic suspense (fictional murder doesn’t get you strip searched!) but I had a secret longing to write ramp up the spills, chills and daring do.

By chance I wrote a science fiction romance, realized I’d been mixing fiction into my science since high school (oops, sorry science teachers!), and thought, why not go where I haven’t gone before? After that, it was easy to stir in some steampunk.

The Key was the first in my Project Enterprise series, which will conclude with #6, Kicking Ashe, which is releasing soon.

TBR: Tell us about STEAMROLLED and where it's available.
Pauline: Steamrolled is available at all the usual online book sites, including Amazon and B&N, and in all digital formats.

TBR: Please tantalize us with a story blurb or excerpt.
Pauline: With all of time at risk, it's a bad time to fall in love—unless it's the only time? Robert Clementyne is going on a transmogrification machine hunt. He fears finding the machine will be as difficult as pronouncing the name.

How can the steam-powered device perform as advertised, and how useful can any information be, coming from a steampunk themed bowling alley/museum? It's pretty crazy, but he's been there, done that, and thinks he can handle it. And then he meets the proprietor/curator—Emily Babcock.

Emily grew up in crazy, still lives in it—hey, it's her freaking zip code. So no worries when Robert and his team walk into her bowling alley. The first visitors ever to her museum.

But neither of them is prepared for what happens when they open the door to the past—and the future. With a side trip through Roswell—and a face-to-face meeting with an evil genius/wannabe—who is on his way to becoming evil overlord-of-everything? 

TBR: Are you a plotter or pantser?
Pauline: I am not just a pantser, I am a leap-off-the-cliff-totally-blind-and-wing-it-into-the completely-unknown-er. Sometimes if feels like my head is going to explode, but it hasn’t. Yet. And so far it always works out. Except for my editor who fears her head will be the one that explodes.

TBR: How do you develop your characters?
Pauline: My characters would totally dispute that I “develop” them. They believe they come visit, study me for a while, and eventually “let” me get to know them. Most of them leave quietly when the book is done, but I had a few stick around and demand their own story, which is how I came to write my Project Enterprise connected series.

TBR: Do you have a favorite quote you’d like to share?
Pauline: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." Groucho Marx

TBR: While creating your books, what was one of the most surprising things you learned?
Pauline: I did some Victorian research for my steampunk/science fiction mash-up, Tangled in Time and wow, the Victorians were a creative and inventive bunch. They invented steam engines, sewing machines, typewriters, the light bulb and the telephone, to name just a few of the normal stuff. The weird stuff was really, really weird. Like totally weird. Some of it creepy weird.

TBR: Tease us with one little thing about your fictional world that makes it different from others.
Pauline: My characters have an…interesting relationship with time. Ashe, who shows up in Steamrolled and stars in Kicking Ashe, can “see” time in a way others can’t and can tell when its wrong. (This would be the part that almost made my head explode.)

TBR: What's next for you?
Pauline: I just turned in Kicking Ashe, so a little between books, though the brain is already percolating on a straight (is there such a thing?) steampunk romance with lots of adventure, buckets of action, and of course, what I hope will be sigh worthy romance.

TBR: Any other published works?
Pauline: I will release my twelfth novel soon, so that would be a hearty yes. My most recent books are science fiction romance, though I used to write romantic suspense back in the day. My most recent books are: The Key, Girl Gone Nova, Tangled in Time, a connected short story called “Steam Time” in the Dreamspell Steampunk Vol 1, and Kicking Ashe, releasing 3/12/2012. Complete information about my books and my backlist are available on my website at www.paulinebjones.com

TBR: What’s the most interesting comment you have received about your books?
Pauline: From a reader on Amazon about Steamrolled: “This book is really quite amazing to me. The synoptic blurb is entirely accurate but only begins to touch the lovely mix of weird and romantic with reasonably credible soft SF.”

TBR: Where can readers find you on the web?
Pauline: I can be found in all the usual social networking places (links on my website) as Pauline Baird Jones and at www.paulinebjones.com

TBR: Thanks for visiting TBR, Pauline. All the best to you.