ReadersRoom.com takes a minute to revisit
M. J. Rose

Rob Holden: M.J. Rose -- welcome to One Year After at ReadersRoom.com. It's a pleasure to have you back with us!

M.J. Rose: And a pleasure to be back, thanks for having me.

Rob Holden: It seems to have been a busy year for you -- and you've just put out a new book. Could you tell our readers a bit about it?

M.J. Rose: The Halo Effect is about a New York City sex therapist who gets involved with the hunt for a serial killer when one of her patients goes missing.

Natalie R. Collins: This is a new series for Mira Books, correct?

M.J. Rose: Technically it is a series -- but not quite. It's called a Butterfield Institute Novel. The Butterfield Institute is the sex therapy clinic where Dr. Morgan Snow works. And the first three books focus on her but in the future other books in will be about other therapists who work there and their adventures.

Natalie R. Collins: Having read and reviewed this novel, I can tell our readers it is excellent and highly recommend it. How did you come up with the premise?

M.J. Rose: Thanks so much Natalie, I appreciate that. I'm not quite sure where the ideas come from except that The Butterfield Institute was in my first novel -- Lip Service -- and while that book didn't focus on the Institute I was fascinated with it and all the research I had done regarding sex therapy. (I wanted to be a sex therapist in the 90s.)

Natalie R. Collins: Well, it served you well, here.

M.J. Rose: So my agent was pushing me to come up with a novel that would be slightly easier to categorize than my previous books. She felt that my "combination of suspense, erotica, a little love story, literary and commercial, and not really suspense" was making it hard for me to break out. No one knew what to call my books. So once she put the thought in my head to write a real psychological suspense novel -- Halo just came to me. In the pool at my health club between lap three and lap four. Full blown. As if my unconscious had been working on it for years.

Natalie R. Collins: So, M.J., what are you working on right now?

M.J. Rose: I'm on number three right now -- or about to be in a few weeks. I have some research to do still. I am in love with these books ... never had as much fun. I seem to have -- thank the heavens-- met a character in Dr. Morgan Snow who has really interesting issues and questions about her life. She's a very good mother but doesn't trust her instincts. She's a really good doctor but worries about crossing the lines with her patients... and personally she's paid less attention to her own mental health than anyone else’s her whole life. So she has a lot of room to grow and readers are telling me that she seems very real but also very exciting to them which was important to me because I read a lot of suspense and a lot of the female heros are over the top for me.

Natalie R. Collins: She is very real, and someone we can relate to, as is the male protagonist, Noah Jordain. I LOVED him.

M.J. Rose: Thanks! I'm dealing with a lot of issues that touch men and women deeply in these books. They are not about the kinds of crimes and issues in most suspense fiction. I fell in love with Noah. Really. I started dreaming about him. I wanted to meet him.

Rob Holden: I'd like to jump back a book here to your last book, Sheet Music. Can you tell our readers who might have missed our first chat with you a bit about that?

M.J. Rose: Sheet Music is one of those -- a little of this and a little of that -- but I loved it. It’s about a young woman who is still grieving for her mother three years after her death. At the same time she is having a work crisis that brings her face to face with her own issues. It takes place in Paris and Connecticut and is about how we put the people we love on pedestals and how badly that hurts us and them. It was very hard to write because I had lost my own mother and I didn't realize how much of that experience I wound up writing about -- fictionalized of course.

Natalie R. Collins: M.J, is this book going to be published in paperback?

M.J. Rose: Sheet Music is out in trade paperback now. And The Halo Effect is a trade paperback original.

Natalie R. Collins: So, tell me, M.J. what is in the future for you? What new works do you have planned?

M.J. Rose: I just finished The Delilah Complex which will be out in April and I am about to start The Venus Fix which will be out nine months later in January ’06.

Natalie R. Collins: And these are Butterfield Institute novels?

M.J. Rose: Yes.

Natalie R. Collins: Well, I look forward to reading them! M.J., thanks for coming back to chat with us and letting us know what is happening with you One Year After our first chat.

M.J. Rose: Thanks so much -- you have some books coming out too don't you? Good luck with those. I'm really excited for you! You've worked hard and deserve this success.

Natalie R. Collins: Thank you! I do have two books with St. Martin's Press. The first, Wives and Sisters, will be out in October. I appreciate your support.

M.J. Rose: May it soar to the bestseller lists.

Natalie R. Collins: M.J., before we go, would you like to say something to your many, many fans?

M.J. Rose: I'm trying hard to write books that are exciting, that you haven't read before, that offer escape and also thinking, but never one at the expense of the other. Please if you would, write me, and let me know if you are enjoying them. And stop by my website at www.mjrose.com because I am running constant Reader Rewards contests -- up now are two diamond and gold charm bracelets. Every six months -- more jewelry for readers!

Natalie R. Collins: Wonderful!

M.J. Rose: Thanks again. And keep reading everyone!

Natalie R. Collins: Thank you again, M.J. Rose, for taking time for ReadersRoom.com’s One Year After and your fans. Best of luck!



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