I’m the wife of a most fabulous man for twenty years.
I’m a mother of 2 busy teens.
I’m a dog lover.
I’m a serious drinker of coffee and wine.
I live near New York City.
My favorite place that I’ve visited is Monte Carlo.
My favorite color is green (but I look best in pink/salmon).
My favorite food is chocolate.
My favorite kind of music is New Country.I’ve always been a creative sort of person… I started with my college studies in Advertising Design and Illustration. I’m good at drawing and coming up with clever ideas.
As for story telling – well, that’s where I have the most fun! Ditching The Dream is my first novel, but I’ve been working on writing movies since, what seems like forever. Way back in high school my friend Aimee and I started writing a movie and I was hooked. We didn’t know what we were doing, but we loved coming up with the story. I also like to come up with stories about people I don’t know. Like the guy that cut me off on the expressway…He had quite a story – at least in my mind! Who knows? Maybe I’ve come up with a story about you! ;)Ditching The Dream is a story that came to me while I was helping two author friends of mine. I was helping them with their books and I would make suggestions to amp up their stories along the way. Bev and Amy encouraged me to write my own story and Ditching The Dream was born. Is it auto-biographical? No, not in the least. But it sure has been a fun story to come up with (especially when my hubby gets involved with coming up with ideas).

Please welcome our very special guest, Isabelle Peterson! Not only is Izzy an amazingly talented writer, she is a lovely, gracious, and kind person. I am grateful for all of her help as Jean and I created Xtreme Delusions.
I’m such a fan of The Dream Series! As I read them, each book becomes my favorite. Although, I have to say it’s now a toss up between book one, Ditching The Dream, and book four, Unexpected Dreams.
For those of you unfamiliar with the series, my review for Ditching The Dream is linked here.

DEB:

Your background is in screenwriting. You not only switched gears to write a novel, but you wrote an entire series. What were the challenges writing a novel?

ISABELLE:

In screenwriting, economy of words is essential. Page count is critical. The freedom to just write as much as I wanted was almost scary! In a novel, you describe absolutely everything, where as in a screenplay you only describe what you see or hear. You don’t dig into feelings, and because of Page Count, you don’t get flowery with your writing. (e.g. “Her face filled with anger,” and it’s up to the actor and director and cinematographer to decide how that’s shown. (maybe the director will tell the actor to squint their eyes, purse your mouth and flare your nostrils) vs. “She became so angry that she felt her blood boil and if this were a cartoon, steam would coming out of her ears.”). And you don’t have to deal with industry format in the same way with a novel.

DEB:

I absolutely loved book 1 in your Dream series, Ditching The Dream. It establishes not only the foundation but also the characters for subsequent books. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the main character, Elizabeth, takes a break from her husband of 20-some years to re-evaluate their marriage. In the process, she has simultaneous affairs with a much younger man as well as a somewhat older man. There are many readers who consider cheating to be a deal breaker in a novel. Did you worry readers might be turned off by Elizabeth’s unfaithfulness to her husband?

 

ISABELLE:

I was TERRIFIED about that! I thought everyone was going to HATE the book because, yeah – although Elizabeth’s husband gave her a “hall pass” she was more-or-less cheating on her wedding vows.

DEB:

You’ve said Ditching The Dream is not autobiographical but is there anything in the series taken from real life or is it all purely imagination?

ISABELLE:

Elizabeth was 42, as was I when I started writing the book. I love wine and making cocktails. I’ve worked in a high end steakhouse, but I was a waitress, not a bartender. My husband has sent me annoying “Can you pick up my dry cleaning?” and “What’s for dinner?” texts… But otherwise, the similarities end there.

DEB:

Which book in the series was your favorite to write? Which one was the hardest to write and why?

 

ISABELLE:

My favorite to write was Unexpected Dreams. I got to take a character that everyone hated in the first 3 books, Greg Fairchild, and I got to make people like him! It was a blast! People were like, “You’re writing a book about him? Why? He’s a total jerk!” But readers got their heads turned around and fell in love with him!
My most difficult to write was Chasing the Dream. It’s been a loooong time since I was 20.

DEB:

When creating the characters in this series did you picture in your mind a particular actor for any of them?

 

ISABELLE:

I used several. Elizabeth was very Anne Hathaway in mind. Jack Stevens… George Clooney meets Dino Hillas. Kevin Parker was Eduardo Verastegui meets Luke Bryan or Jake Owen.

DEB:

Many authors listen to music while writing and even create playlists for each book. Do you need music to help your writing process? Do you create playlists? If so, what do you listen to?

ISABELLE:

If I listen to music, it’s New Country… but no, I don’t usually listen to music. Mostly I’ll have HGTV or the FoodNetwork as my background noise. And I don’t make playlists. I’m not a really big music person…

DEB:

You mention in your bio that your husband gets involved with coming up with ideas. What was his best contribution?

ISABELLE:

Oh! I love this question!!! In the book, Elizabeth always had short hair (like Anne Hathaway after Les Miserables). Then my 1st cover was made. The cover model had long wavy hair. So, the cover model didn’t match the character (a pet peeve of mine when the cover model is so far off from the character described in the book) When I was talking to my husband about trying to find another cover photo, he said, “Well, what if she shows up in New York with long hair, and gets her hair cut there?” So, I went back into the manuscript & wrote it in! And had to find all the other spots where a drastic haircut would influence the story.
(I changed the covers when I needed to find a photo for the 2nd book… and wasn’t able to find one. So, I thought, “Well, Dreams go up in smoke – so – let’s make the covers with different colored smoke” and I love the new covers!!!)

 

DEB:

Can you give us a hint about book 6?

ISABELLE:

Well, you meet the Fairchild sons… Brad & Carter… and their significant others. Apple carts get turned, and not everyone stays together in the epilogue.

DEB:

Do you have any other projects in the works?

ISABELLE:

Oh yes!
HIGHER LEARNING – a standalone, M/M, student-teacher HEA.
ELLE’S HEAT – a standalone, M/F, murder mystery thriller also with an HEA.
WIN FOR LOVE – another standalone, New Adult, M/F straight-up love story (of course, it will be sensual). This will be my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) project.

Where to Stalk Isabelle Peterson:

Related Posts:

Review: Ditching The Dream by Isabelle Peterson