And our Sue's Clues Mystery Author is:

Meet this round's Mystery Author—JACQUELYN FRANK.

Jacquelyn Frank is currently living in Saugerties, New York, and has been writing romantic fiction ever since she picked up her first teen romance at age 13. With four sisters and other family scattered up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and a history of living all across the USA herself, she still always finds ways to give a nod to her native New York in her work. Jacquelyn lives with her three “children,” a trio of male domestic shorthaired cats whose personalities have often inspired aspects of her characters. A former Sign Language Interpreter and substitute teacher, she is a powerful advocate of reading and writing. She is known for her persistent gifts of books to her nieces and nephews, as well as all the other children in her life, in an effort to see them love both as much as she does. She believes there is nothing more rewarding than the imagination and all it inspires, and nothing more tragic than illiteracy.

*Biography from Kensington Books, photo from http://www.jacquelynfrank.com/

1. So, I heard a rumor that you like cats. *G* I saw pictures of three at your website and must say they are beautiful. How many do you have in all?

I now have four cats. I recently adopted my fourth from Petsmart. I made the mistake of going past the glass (NEVER go past the glass if you are a cat addict!!) and he presented himself with a purr and rolled over to give me his tummy. It was love at first sight. I brought Bianca to meet him and she went nuts over him. That's now, in age order, Nicodemous, Nino, (as in the Spanish word for 'little boy') Damien, and Leo. My four sons. Nino is a dead ringer for Nicodemous, only a little meatier. Heh.

2. Can you tell us about your ward, Bianca? She looks to be a precious little girl. Suddenly having a six-year-old in your life is sure to be quite an adventure. How long has she been with you? I'm betting she'll be quite spoiled over the holidays

Oh boy, will she ever! Spoiled rotten. I love it. I went completely overboard. Bianca is the daughter of a friend of mine who, unfortunately, has hit hard times. We've all been through that and I remember, as a kid, how I always longed for someone to step in and help me out of the situation I was in. People talked a good deal, but no one ever DID anything. When I saw the situation deteriorating, I was determined to DO something besides lecture and give advice. I've got guardianship of her and I will be keeping her for the year while mom gets back on her feet.

I will be the first to admit this is a real challenge for me. A kid eats up your time, yes, but more than anything a child eats up your peace. If you go from what I had before where the environment was completely designed for me and my comfort and my creative process, and then yaw to having a child with both normal and extra-special needs, it's a sort of culture shock. But all it takes is a first reading of The Polar Express, followed by cuddling up under a blanket in the dark to watch the movie version of it and feeling the kinetic energy of her belief and her excitement...and it all comes instantly to rights. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

3. I've always wondered about those people who signed language at the corner of the screen. How long were you an ASL Interpreter? It was probably very satisfying work but I have to say my carpal tunnel acts up just thinking about doing it myself!

Heh. Yeah, definitely a job hazard, that carpal tunnel thing. I loved signing. I loved it when I was a kid in school (Florida mainstreamed deaf and hearing into the same system where I attended) and it fascinated me all of my life. I went to school for four years just to get my degree and you can't imagine the depth of Deaf culture that exists out there. It's fascinating how a rash of pregnant women contracting Rubella around the time I was born helped to create modern Deaf culture. But that's another story.

As you so eloquently pointed out, signing is a job that requires a great deal of stamina as well as constant re-education and focus. If you lose any one of those key elements, I feel you won’t do justice to the job. I had to withdraw from the field when illness affected my endurance. Hold your arms in the air for an hour straight and see how you feel. Now, do it again while moving them at the speed of speech. It's exhausting. Rewarding and fun, but exhausting.

4. You have 4 sisters - 5 girls growing up in one house. What was that like? Are you all close in age? Your poor dad! Your poor mom! The teenage years alone must have been..... chaos?

Actually, I don’t really think there was ever a time during the adolescent years when we were all in my father's house at the same time. My parents divorced when I was nine. I changed custody to live with my Dad with my middle sisters when I was 13. The eldest and youngest stayed with my mother. Still, the age range of the middle three sisters was 13,12, and 10 at that time. A couple of years down the road the fact that there was only one bathroom became a real issue. Heh. I credit my 'natural' look to the fact that I had no desire to fight my sisters for hair and makeup time in the bathroom. I have a brush and go ‘do and don’t wear anything but chapstick except on special occasions. And you should feel bad for my Dad! Even the two dogs were girls! He was utterly out-numbered as the only male in the house! He was also ultra-conservative and ultra old-fashioned. It's a wonder he survived mini-skirts!

5. You mentioned at your website that you've camped across USA. How long of a trip was that? And how did you get so lucky to be able to do it?

Oh man. That's a funny story. Actually, it was a honeymoon trip after my now-defunct marriage. We traveled from NY to FL to MT, where we stopped and stayed to live. I think it took 2 to 3 weeks. I don’t recall much about it except for the beauty of it and the damn flat tires I kept getting. But we were looking for a new start and a new home...like something out of Little House on the Prairie...and we found it. Montana is breathtaking, and it's always good to know more about the world firsthand than the borders of your own town. Just to taste the differences out there. But in the end I ran home to my folks after one of the coldest and most brutal winter I have ever lived through. It takes tough people to live out west, no lie. Even in this day and age. I'm much older now of course, so I think I could do much better on my own just about anywhere. I know I have the most portable job in the world. All I need is my laptop and Fed Ex!

6. Tell us about your books - JACOB and GIDEON are the first in your 'The Nightwalkers' series.

JACOB comes out November 28th, only days away from writing this, and I am so excited I might pop. I love this series. I am completely enamored and embedded in the world of the Nightwalkers. The best part about the series, I think, is that the Nightwalkers are multiple races and multiple cultures. I have almost endless species to plumb and explore and create. It takes me where it wants (and I must say it can be a demanding little booger sometimes) and the stories spin out with their own sense of order that always seems to just work. I am lucky to have Kensington and my editor, Kate Duffy. They don’t tell me what I should do, what I have to do, and what is commercially going to be in demand of me. They just let me write whatever the heck I want, however the heck I want, and then promise me they wouldn’t ever let me make an ass out of myself as they read them. Kate swears she has never been this excited about a series in all her years as an editor. How cool is that?? What a compliment! And the covers they are generating are to die for! Yum yum yummy! They are really going all out to get this story and this series out to all of the romance fiends like me out there. And I am so glad that they are because Jacob and his friends have been my salvation through years of hard times and all I want in the world is to share the beauty of their stories with all of you. There's so much hard times for all of us, there really is. We need beautiful things to soothe us and tempt us and take us on gorgeous journeys out of our lives, even if for just a little while (steadily...every six months!)

7. How does it feel to have authors like Christine Feehan and Sherrilyn Kenyon saying such great things about your books?

AWESOME! These ladies are my goddesses! I have shelves just bursting with their work! What a one-two punch of delight. I couldn’t believe it when Kate emailed me the quotes. And Linda Howard…you can tell she really took the time to be so very eloquent in her praise and I am so very freakin’ grateful! (seriously, that’s a huge bucket-o-thanks coming from a Long Island gal) I couldn’t have asked for more. It was a perfect trifecta.

8. How long have you been writing? Is this something you've done for years? Just a hobby that's taken off? Did you consciously write to get published? I guess what I'm asking is - did you go to workshops and classes, etc., to get where you're at or did you just happen to write until the pieces fell into place?

Wow. What a great question. For me, writing is truly a passion. The dream was to be published…one day. But I always thought it would have to take a miracle or a grand act of the universe because I never…and I mean NEVER ONCE submitted anything to anyone. I have been writing since I was thirteen and back then…boy did I suck. I have also been notorious for having the crap kicked out of my confidence in the past, so I learned, like many of us, to guard what I treasured the most to protect it from the aforementioned crap-kicking. I only took one creative writing class in college, and I credit my professor with tightening up my focus in some ways, but he also thought that romance and genre fiction was a waste of time and couldn’t be considered ‘serious fiction’. Makes me wonder really what is left after you take genres away…

Anyway, I completely backed into getting published and I don’t recommend my methods to anyone. I entered the Brava contest for new writers at the last minute (hosted on Lori Foster’s website) and was one of the 20 finalists. (I think Sylvia Day won that one…maybe not. I do know she got a contract out of it!) I was so protective of my work, so terrified of rejection at that point, that I actually threw up after hitting the ‘submit’ button. Then I made finalist and felt a real sense of achievement. It was the first time I had exposed my work in public and it went well! Imagine that. Then Kate Duffy called me out of the blue and said she liked what I did, send whatever I have. I sent…and a year later I called and asked if she ever got it. She said no. LOL. A YEAR. Am I bad or what? So I re-sent. Only this time I didn’t send just the submission story, I sent JACOB, too. I think it was fate the first one got misplaced. Kate ended up reading JACOB first. She called me up and instead of hello just kept saying ‘Wow! I mean WOW!’ Meanwhile I am hyperventilating and screeching ‘REALLY??? REALLY??” I’m sure I cried, too. Cookies may have been tossed.

So that’s how I got published…without a single rejection letter. I’m rather proud of that. Even if it WAS an act of fate/luck that she got hold of the GOOD story first. I guess the answer is… I trained myself, soaking up what I could from every source I touched, including those stellar talents of my favorite authors (does it show my age to say I read Nora Roberts for the first time via my subscription to the maiden voyage of a romance line called LOVESWEPT?) and my work has evolved and re-evolved (and sometime de-evoled…yikes!) over and over again through the years until a very savvy editor saw potential in my voice. I’ve changed a lot since then, gained a lot of confidence. Now, I’m just in it for the ride. I love inspiration. I love the characters. I adore making myself laugh and cry for them. (I cry easily) (I laugh easily!) Most of all, I’m going to love sharing.