Visit with Sinclair Jayne – Debut Author of “Wrecked”!

Wrecked, my first published book, started out as a writing exercise. I have been lucky enough to work as an editor for Tule Publishing (best job ever) for over a year, and Jane Porter and the Tule team were brainstorming a So Cal surfer series, set in Tule based, San Clemente. I grew up in Laguna, a town a bit north on Pacific Coast Highway, and had pined, and sighed and admired many early morning and evening surfers in my day as a teen and college student. Growing up, one of my favorite places to write poems and short stories were the beaches of San Clemente, the bluffs of Laguna (Pearl Street and Diamond Beach) and perched safely back above the Wedge in Newport Beach. So while not an expert on surfing, but never shy with my opinion, I chimed in enthusiastically about what a Sons of San Clemente series could read like.

Jane Porter wanted a “gritty, urban feel.” A former goth music fan and embarrassingly melodramatic and gloomy in my youth, I embraced the darker possibilities in the series more keenly on an emotional level. The character of Hollis came to me while Jane and I were talking—twin brother’s death, insecurities, introversion and failures nearly fully formed. I wrote down her character arc and then tried to think of the perfect hero for her. Kadan is probably my version of the perfect man. Perfect without being perfect, and I named him after one of my favorite Christine Feehan heroes in her book Murder Game.

After I wrote the first chapter, I thought I’d stop and talk to the team to see if this thing I’d done could be useful in any way, but I was having so much fun I decided to keep going, just to see if I could still write. I hadn’t written very much over the past six to eight years, and I was surprised and pleased at how much fun it was. The story unfolded fairly easily, and my usual getting lost in the middle, didn’t happen. I think it was the combination of not thinking I was writing a book as well as the plethora of amazing, dynamic Tule author talent I have had the privilege of reading and talking story craft with over the past year and a half that inspired and helped me to craft a story that I really love. I am so totally thankful that I finished my first draft and sent it in to Tule with the simple question “So, what do you think?” before I knew Kathy Garbera, an amazing and best selling story teller author, was writing the first book in the series. I’ve been so fired up to work with Kathy. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of a series with her, but really, way more nail biting than anything else in my life, especially after I read Crushed.

I am now working on the sequel to Wrecked called Broken featuring Kadan’s friend, Lane and think another field trip to San Clemente should definitely be on my list. The town with all its Spanish style heritage and Ole Hanson architectural design is a thing of beauty. Plus I owe the Tule team a lot more salted caramel chocolate.

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Sinclair has loved reading romance novels since she discovered Barbara Cartland historical romances when she was in sixth grade. By seventh grade, she was haunting the library shelves looking to fall in love over and over again with the heroes born from the imaginations of her favorite authors. After teaching writing classes and workshops to adults and teens for many years in Seattle and Portland, she returned to her first love of reading romances and became an editor for Tule Publishing last year. Sinclair lives in Oregon’s wine country where she and her family own a small vineyard of Pinot Noir and where she dreams of being able to write at a desk like Jane Austen instead of in parking lots waiting for her kids to finish one of their 12,000 extracurricular activities.