By: Yohana de la Torre

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Julie Compton says readers turn authors into storytellers.

As a child in St. Louis, Compton grew up around a slew of different books since her father was an avid reader. She says she began writing at a very young age and often compared her work to the classics, but her style was simple and straightforward, not “pretty.”

She believes in character-driven stories that touch people emotionally somehow and has definitely proven that in her latest

  
 
 

novel, Rescuing Olivia.

Rescuing Olivia is the story of Anders Erickson, a Florida biker who sets out on a journey to find his girlfriend when she mysteriously disappears from the hospital after a suspicious motorcycle accident. Anders search becomes a race against time when he learns Olivia’s life is at stake, and he is forced to finally confront his own past if he is to have any chance of rescuing Olivia from hers.

The novel is scheduled for release in the Unites States on February 2 and Compton will visit Barnes and Noble, located at 13751 Tamiami Trail in Fort Myers on February 18 at 7 pm.

Seeing that she’d be visiting us soon we reached out to Compton for a little inside on her latest romantic thriller and what she has planned for her next novel.

Y: “Do you recall a distinct “turning point” when you felt your writing style changed or improved while you were growing up?”

J: “The turning point for me came during my first year of law school. I was an English literature major in undergraduate school, and I constantly compared my own writing against the classics we read and studied. My writing is simple and straightforward, and not “pretty”. [But] when I began law school, I found that my style was appreciated because I wrote in straightforward prose. At some point, I decided that this same, leaner prose could also work in fiction.”

Y: “What type of themes or subjects do your novels deal with?”

J: “My novels are, at their core, explorations of the relationships between people. It may be romantic relationships, parent/child relationships, relationships between siblings, and even between friends, but in my fiction, relationships (and the motivations behind them) matter.”

Y: “How do you develop your plots? Are they real life experiences or are they a result of an overactive imagination?”

J: “For Rescuing Olivia and Tell No Lies, the plots were the result of an overactive imagination combined with a few “real life” events that acted as seeds and grew into something else. Because I didn’t know the plot of either when I started writing them, they developed organically as I wrote. But I have a notebook where I keep ideas for future use, and several of these ideas arose from real life events.”

Y: “Do you have a favorite author? And what have you learned from their style?”

J: “I always have such a hard time answering this question, because I simply have so many different authors I love, and I read such a wide range of books. My “favorite” is constantly changing. I always love anything written by Margaret Atwood. A newer favorite is Paulo Coelho. The stories he tells in his novels are often deceptively simple on the surface, but they have such depth. In the thriller and mystery genres, I really loved Tom Rob Smith’s Child 44.”

Y: “Do you have another novel on the cutting board so to speak already? Can you share a little about it?”

J: “Right now I’m working on a novel tentatively titled Keep No Secrets, which is a sequel to my first novel, Tell No Lies. The only thing Jack wants is to be trusted again, by his family and his constituency alike, but a few roadblocks are going to make that difficult for him – some from his past, and some from his present.”

- Compton will host a book signing at Barnes and Noble, located at 13751 Tamiami Trail in Fort Myers on February 18 at 7 pm. For more information, visit www.julie-compton.com.