Today I’m fortunate to be hosting Jill Hughey, author of the Evolution Series of historical romances set in the medieval period after Charlemagne’s death, in Francia and Bavaria.

Other than her unusual but deliberate choice of a setting for her books, Jill says the most interesting thing about her is that she “can sing really, really high.” (She actually takes soprano lessons!)

The common thread through her books are the heroes. The titles describe the men. Unbidden’s hero, David, is a traditional warrior-type who, at the emperor’s bidding, courts an independent estate owner. David’s brother, Doeg, is the tortured and withdrawn hero of book #2, Redeemed. The third book, Vain, features David’s best friend, the Lord of Ribeauville, who tries to resist the temptation of the skilled daughter of his tailor. Also in the series are Second Love: A Short Historical Romance Story, and Little Witch: Historical Romance Novella, in which Jill creates happy endings for two servants. (All the books except Little Witch are available in the Evolution Series Bundle.)

Jill shared wonderful information about herself in her interview with me:

Has writing professionally changed you as a person?
Yes. Committing to writing as the vocation of my future has focused my efforts and helped me to prioritize my time and energy.

What is the best writing advice you have ever received?
Write the next book.
Carole: I love it!

What is your best childhood memory?
I am blessed with parents who like to travel. When I was four we made our first trip to a dude ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Moosehead Ranch is a child’s paradise, and you can imagine the joy for a little girl who loved horses to be able to ride twice a day! We’ve returned there as a family many, many times and almost every minute is a cherished memory.

What is your ultimate writing goal?
I’d like to continue to write for decades, and be able to help support my family and “float” my retirement with my writing.

If you could do a guest role on your favorite TV series, what show would it be and what character would you play?
My favorite series right now is probably “The Americans.” If we are indulging in absolute fantasy, I guess I would play a character trying but failing to seduce Matthew Rhys’s character because I wouldn’t mind having a scene or two with him (love his voice), but I’d never be comfortable actually doing anything physical with a stranger OR on screen.

What book character would you nominate for president?
OK, this will sound completely hokey, but I would nominate Carlisle Cullen, from Twilight. Before some of you start gagging, hear me out. He is compassionate, has centuries of perspective, and could fire his entire secret service detail. There is the whole not-technically-American-born thing, but the Cullens are really good at creating identities.
CA: You know, Jill, I really think that’s a great choice!

What is the greatest positive impact you’ve had on another person? Please describe the circumstances.
Well, that is a hard one. My husband and I have both been struggling to show our oldest son that sometimes you have to work toward a goal even when you don’t feel like it, or even when it isn’t your goal. We’ve been fighting the battle of the math grade, and early indications are that now, as a junior in high school, he may finally understand that every lesson, every chapter, every course, is a stepping stone to the next thing, so what seems stupid and irrelevant today is important for something you need tomorrow. If I can send my two kids into the world with a sense of responsibility for themselves, I’ll be satisfied.
CA:  Raising children is definitely a challenge and a balancing act as well.

What is your greatest challenge as a writer?
Time. I never have enough.

What are absolute food and drink essentials for your writing process?
Coffee, mostly decaf, surprisingly enough. Food is a real temptation. I’d love to snack on salty, crunchy stuff all day long while I write…but I don’t! I swear!

What one thing do you suggest for men, in general, to do in order to be more romantic in a relationship?
Pay attention to what is meaningful to your partner. Just because your idea of a romantic interlude is a nice dinner out doesn’t mean dinner is her idea of a romantic interlude. For all you know, she’d like you to spend a few hours yardsaling with her, or to put the dinner money toward a pair of shoes she’s been denying herself. Or maybe all she wants is for you to write a few heartfelt words on a piece of scrap paper. Pay attention.

Please tell us about your newest release, Little Witch: Historical Romance Novella.
It was originally going to be a short story. Salena, my heroine, had way too much backstory for that to work, so I just kept writing until the story was properly told. It ended at 49,000 words, which is either a short novel or a long novella. Little Witch tells the story of a young woman who is a rural outcast dreaming of escape from cruel neighbors and tedium, and Nox, the Lord of Ribeauville’s employee, who refuses to become attached to anyone due to his childhood loss of his entire family.

“The night is dark. The moon is bright. She brings his heart into her light.”

Thank you for the opportunity to visit today, Carole!
CA:  It was absolutely my pleasure!

Here is a wonderful excerpt from Little Witch: Historical Romance Novella

Trees around the church offered patches of relief from the warming June sun. Salena backed away from the building, shading her eyes to see as much of it at once as possible. She finally gave up, dropping her hand to her side, defeated.

“What is it?” Nox asked.

“I will never have the memory of it right in my mind,” she said. “I want to remember it perfectly. I wish I could carry it right back home with me, to look at it when I wished.” She hurried to the other side of the hill where she looked down over the town again. “I envy you,” she said over her shoulder. “You have all of this around you. You come and go as you please and are among people. Look at them, walking in the street and talking. All I have ever known is grass, mud, trees and the river. Suddenly there are all these things I’ve been told about but never understood.”

Nox almost said something light-hearted about sometimes wanting fewer people around. Her forlorn expression stopped him. “There is nothing wrong with grass and trees,” he said.

“The air smells different,” she said, inhaling.

“Smoke and latrines,” he suggested.

She swatted his arm. “You want me to think the worst. But I won’t,” she vowed, bracing her hands on her hips. “I will remember it as perfect.”

“You talk as if your visit here is already over.”

“It will be, too soon.”

“The town isn’t going to disappear.”

“No, the town will be here. Depending on Grant to bring me to the town is another thing entirely.” She sighed. “I feel so trapped at home, Nox. I just do not fit there anymore. I sensed it before, then last night, in Lady Lily’s hall, I could feel myself expanding to fill a new space.”

She tilted her head back. The sun highlighted her full lips, the temptation of them overwhelming the internal warning her words incited in him. “Don’t listen to my rambling,” she said to the sky. “I certainly don’t imagine I belong in that great house.” She sighed again. “I don’t know why I keep blurting these things out to you.” She gave him a direct look. “Actually, that is a lie. I tell you because there is no one else I can tell. I cannot tell anyone in my family. They would be worried or hurt. They would think that something must be done when I know very well there is nothing to do.” She set her shoulders. “Forgive me. Let me go find Grant. You were probably hoping to spend the day with him, not stuck with his awestruck hayseed sister and pregnant wife.” She shifted to walk around him.

“Stop,” he said, indeed wanting to stop her rambling. She confused him, and the desire aroused by his simple touch to her arm alarmed him even more than her declaration that she wanted to leave her home, with an apparent preference for Ribeauville. “You are not a hayseed. I am not exactly sure what you are, but you are not a hayseed any more than you are a witch.”

Those soft lips parted in wonder at his announcement, and the eyes that frightened other people drew him in. He kissed her. On the grounds of the church in full view of anyone who might happen along, he kissed her and drank her in after a tedious month of pretending he was not thinking of her. He pulled her against him despite a long night of convincing himself he had not wanted to do just that the moment she hopped down from the cart yesterday.

She broke the kiss to settle against him, her ear on his chest, head tucked under his chin. Her hands settled on his waist in that way she had that implied a comprehensive possession of his body, the heat of her palms coursing through him like warmed wine.

“I missed you, Nox,” she said, devastating him with the simplicity of the statement.

He did not know how to answer since this had been what he had worried about all along. He had told himself he dreaded her attachment to him. If that was true, how could she feel so perfect nestled against him? How could her words calm him instead of worrying him? He said nothing, but could not stop the momentary tightening of his arms around her before he set her away from him with an internal reminder that he had nothing more than occasional kisses to offer.

Little Witch: Historical Romance Novella is the fourth book in the Evolution Series and is available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EUA1TI8. Most of Jill’s books are available in print, and Little Witch will be there soon if it isn’t already.

The third book, Vain, is on sale September 19 – 22, 2013 for 99 cents at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BNETIG4 and Barnes and Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/vain-jill-hughey/1114587598?ean=9781482031126

If you’d like to keep in touch with Jill Hughey, she blogs at http://jillhughey.blogspot.com, is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jillhugheyromance, and tweets @jillhughey.

I was three years old when I taught myself to read. The youngest of 6 children in a dysfunctional home, the kids were on their own without nurturing from either parent. Comfort lay in the amazing stories in hand-me-down books that I was glad to receive.

The first book I read was Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss. At my age I recognized that an important element was missing but couldn’t define it. It wasn’t until I read the next book, Are You My Mother by P.D. Eastman that I understood what a real story was about. Although I was too young to explain it, I knew that Hop on Pop lacked a plot and substance. Finally, I came across the gem, the one that intrigued and inspired the writer within.

The Passion Ignited!

Go, Dog. Go!, another great story by P.D. Eastman, hit me like my first Steinbeck novel did a dozen years later. I was blown away. Not only was the book full of literally colorful characters, but it added a new dimension to my reading experience. In and out of multiple dog adventures, from a canine party on a tiny sail boat to working on a crane, a young dog couple meet in passing. She dangerously flirts, flashing him with fancy hats, but it’s not enough to win his affections.

This flirtation goes on until the end of the story, when a big dog party takes place in a giant tree, and herein lies the moment when I discovered that I wanted to write stories of my own. The cartoon drawings in the book are one dimensional against a white backdrop. It’s up to the reader to see through the white canvas background. Beyond the giant tree where the party takes place the road disappears into a pinpoint on the horizon and I wanted so desperately to know where the road led. My imagination filled in the blanks and more.

Now here’s the next best part. Out of nowhere, the female dog appears with the most atrocious hat ever, filled with spiders, potted plants, and party favors. She asks the male dog, “Do you like my hat?” He is utterly thrilled and smitten with both her and the hat, filled with all things like a dowry that she has to offer in exchange for his love and protection.

At the end of the book, the male and female drive off into the sunset and that makes Go, Dog. Go! the first romance I ever read. And of course, I wouldn’t know for decades that writing served me as a way to escape the brutal realities of a childhood that no one should have to endure.

But What Will People Think?

I hid my stories for fear of rejection until my mid-twenties, always concerned about judgment and criticism. I didn’t give myself permission to pursue writing as a profession until my late thirties. Over two decades later I have a fiction and a non-fiction book contract, as well as an addiction to perfecting my craft. (Please don’t do the math!)

Perhaps I intuitively knew at a young age that I needed a voice to express the chaotic institution called family and all the suffering it meant for me. Since I didn’t feel heard, the written word became my preference of communication.

A passion should never be held at bay and put in favor of something we feel we “should” be doing. I was called to be a writer and strongly feel that my writing is making a strong contribution to those who allow themselves to be inspired by what they read. Writing makes me feel like a better person and lets me see beyond the horizon.

Does your career fulfill your passion? What is it that you’re doing and what inspired you to get started?

Please visit and comment at the following blogs of other writers:

Stop stopping yourself. Stop holding yourself back.

Stop giving power to your limitations. Instead, give commitment, action and persistence to your best possibilities.

Fear and anxiety are immensely compelling, yet you are even stronger. The inertia of complacency is powerful, and yet you can overcome it.

Whatever may have been holding you back has done so with your cooperation. Choose now to no longer cooperate.

You have made the excuses and rationalizations, and you can now let them go. You have focused on the fear, and you can now move beyond it.

The challenges facing you are very real, but that doesn’t mean you must add to them. Instead, use the positive power of your life to move successfully through them.

—–Ralph Marston

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Where did we learn that to give up our own needs to satisfy the needs of others was a worthy and humbling experience? Who taught us that in order to be a good person it was necessary to put more importance on the needs of others than our own? This is especially true for any type of abuse victim, be it physical, sexual, or psychological. Add guilt, religion, and other cultural factors and you have the makings of a fully-fledged martyr.

More often women usually give too much of themselves than men, and those in service professions are the most guilty of neglecting their physical and emotional health. Nurses, teachers, social workers, and any type of caregiver easily fall into this category. They also have higher levels of stress and strained relationships at home.

Somewhere along the road, be it starting in childhood or later in life, we were taught that our needs weren’t important and that had an underlying message of “You’re not worth it.” Boundaries were too often neglected. Anyone could walk all over us without proper limits set in place.

You can’t possibly value others without valuing yourself. That’s the same as saying you can’t love others without loving yourself. Both are true statements. Most of the time when an abuse survivor operates from past behavior patterns, you are doing good deeds for others not because you’re coming from a place of love, but from a place of need for approval, attention, acceptance, or love.

Everything you did in the past was to satisfy others and now that you’re trying to satisfy yourself, those feelings of not being worthy can easily rise to the surface. It gets harder to take care of yourself because of the guilt. Guilt is like a gigantic self imposed roadblock–a roadblock of your own creation based on the foundation of wrong thinking, on your own misperceptions or those influenced by other people’s versions of the truth that are not your own.

The good news is that because this roadblock was built upon a shaky foundation it will be easier to remove. Watch it fall apart right in front of you as you learn to accept the truth that you are worthy and that you deserve to be treated fairly. Being a martyr is not being humble –that’s allowing yourself to be persecuted for sins that aren’t your own. The person who influenced you by encouraging you to disregard your own happiness and desires was living through you and making you responsible for their redemption.

Take a look at Mother Teresa. She had to be one of the most humble women on the planet, giving selflessly to serve dying homeless, penniless people in Calcutta. But if you crossed her, told her she couldn’t open a shelter somewhere, or told her that she was going to catch some kind of illness helping the destitute, she could blast you from here to the moon. She didn’t put up with “you can’t” or “I can’t.” She didn’t allow herself to be bullied by anyone. Mother Teresa may be in the running for sainthood by the Catholic church, but when it came to her temper she could cut loose –all in the name of humanity. For those who had no voice she lent hers.

Yes, Mother Teresa was humble but she was no martyr. Yes, she saw to the needs of others, but she recognized that if she didn’t command respect, she’d be on her knees begging for help just like the people she was trying to save. She expected people to support her cause. She didn’t go around with empty palms and sad puppy eyes. She didn’t hold her hand out for a check –money was freely given to her. She made people feel responsible for caring for others through her proactive work.

Mother Teresa had no problem putting her needs in front of others when she had to —when it meant to find food, clothing, and shelter for those she wanted to help. She’d get the money to make it her dream of helping others a reality but she didn’t sacrifice her soul or dignity to get it. She wasn’t a martyr and didn’t lie in the street like a victim.

Putting your emotional, physical, and psychological needs first doesn’t mean you’re being selfish. It means that you recognize you have to take care of yourself if you want to be of greater service to others or the community.

Don’t allow yourself to be a victim or a martyr. Stand strong in your “I am Love” power and be proactive so that you can transfer that energy to your life and those who need your help. Use that energy to create a new road map for yourself, with a direction pointed directly at emotional and mental health, strong boundaries, and Love enough to provide a vision for others to follow. Pull out your creative energy guns and blast the world with your own personal colors that will paint a picture of truth, happiness, and inspiration.

Do you forget to take care of yourself? Do you let guilt deprive you from living your life to the fullest?