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URL:
http://juliarachelbarrett.com/
Contact:
Julia@JuliaRachelBarrett.com
ABOUT
JULIA
Julia Barrett has lived many
lives, but the one central theme of each is her writing. She’s
written prose and poetry since she was a child. She comes from a
long line of men and women who love to read and write, starting
with her beloved grandmother, a playwright. Julia has had
articles published in medical and nursing magazines and poetry
published in various literary journals. Now she writes romance
in several genres, including science fiction, futuristic,
paranormal, romantic-suspense and she dabbles in contemporary
romance.
Julia attended the University of Iowa, where she majored in
Creative Writing and the University of Utah, where she majored
in nursing. She’s been a hospice nurse for ten years. Between
the time she graduated from The University of Iowa and found her
calling as a hospice nurse, Julia has been a waitress, a
bartender, a legal secretary, a caterer, a private chef, a
pastry chef, and a restauranteer.
Julia and the love of her life live on the West Coast with an
entire food chain of animals and three children who come and go
frequently. She loves to hear from her readers!
INTERVIEW
Q: What do you consider
a perfect day?
A: Wow. Not to be new age, but
I consider everyday perfect in its own way. I guess being a
hospice nurse gives you that kind of perspective. A really fun
day might be hiking with my dog on the steepest, most isolated
hills in our valley, or walking in the Scottish Highlands -
which I did last year for ten days and found it magical, or
galloping a horse across an open meadow in Montana, or rafting
down the Salmon River in Idaho. As you can tell, I'm an outdoor
type and a bit of a risk-taker. Whatever I do, if my husband and
my kids can do it with me, that's perfection!
Q: Do you plot out a
story or does it come to you?
A: Stories come in different
ways. Sometimes I'm struck with a single idea and I write from
there, other times I dream an entire story from start to finish
and I just fill in the details. I've always had a vivid
imagination. When I was a child, I'd put myself to sleep at
night by making up stories in my head. I still do that. When I
write I never plot a story out, but I do write a one or two
sentence biography of my characters and a brief description of
my settings. Once I get started, I grow so close to my
characters that I never refer to their bios. They become real to
me and their stories become immediate. It's one of the reasons I
work on one book at a time. Once I immerse myself in a
make-believe world and I can't inject myself into another.
Q: What is your typical
writing day like?
A: Chaotic! I'm up early to
feed all the pets, I quickly check emails and then head out with
my dog for a five mile hike. We go rain, shine, hail, wind,
flood, earthquake...I'm a freak about fresh air...can't think
without it. I come home, make myself an espresso and re-read my
previous chapter. Re-reading what I've just written helps me
pick up my train of thought, or gets me into character, and then
I write. Sometimes I'll write six to eight hours a day,
sometimes two, it depends upon what else is going on that
day. When you have a husband who works constantly, three very
busy, interesting kids, multiple animals and a job in real life,
well...as I said, chaotic! I can usually get in two to three
good solid hours of writing at night.
Q: Do you have any guilty
pleasures?
A: Oh yeah, lots, but most of
them are too personal to discuss! I'm a real sucker for good
milk chocolate. I don't like dark chocolate despite the fact
that it's supposed to be more complex. I just like the smooth
silky mouth feel of milk chocolate. I love ethnic food, Mexican,
Thai, sushi - anything spicy. I can't write to music but I love
to put on my old rock and roll and Motown CDs and sing at the
top of my lungs while I'm driving the car. I'm not a huge TV
watcher but I do have my can't miss - right now that
would be True Blood, but Battlestar Galactica may be my all-time
favorite series. Now that it's over, I really feel it! I like
NCIS too, probably because the characters seem like a family,
and I speak Hebrew and Zeva is supposed to be Israeli.
Q: What do you hope to
achieve with your writing?
A: Well, first and foremost, to
be read. Second, to entertain. Third, to take a reader out of
his or her daily life and slip them into a nice fantasy. I like
romance because you can pretty much count on a happy ending and
what's so bad about a happy ending? Life can be stressful and
I've come to realize that at the end of the day I'm not really
into reading a depressing book, or watching a movie that's a
real downer, no matter how great it is. Sometimes yeah, sure,
but the more I experience, the more I appreciate that happy
ending, in books and in real life.
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