I am excited to have my first joint interview! And with personalities like Jaime Jo and Pepper, you know it is going to be fun and faith filled. Before we dive in, let me introduce you to their new Young Adult Romantic Comedies.

About the Books

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About the Authors

Jaime Jo Wright is a multi-award-winning author of gothic historical mystery novels that weave suspense through dual timelines. Her debut novel, The House on Foster Hill (2017), won both the prestigious Christy Award and the Daphne du Maurier Award, establishing her as a compelling voice in inspirational fiction. An ECPA and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author, Wright specializes in chilling mysteries stained with history’s secrets, drawing readers into haunting tales set primarily in turn-of-the-century Wisconsin. Her work has earned praise from Publishers Weekly for skillfully wrapping intricate mysteries around dual timelines with enough surprises to captivate lovers of gothic fiction. When she isn’t writing mysteries, she co-authors YA RomCom with her teenage daughter, Chloe JoAnne, with a passion to provide sweet and witty romance for teenagers with no apologies needed. Residing in Wisconsin’s rural woodlands with her husband and their two children, Wright is a self-proclaimed coffee enthusiast and lover of all of her rescued felines.

Connect with Jaime Jo by visiting jaimewrightbooks.com to follow her on social media and subscribe to email updates.

Pepper Basham is an award-winning author who writes romance “peppered” with grace and humor. Writing both historical and contemporary novels, she loves to incorporate her native Appalachian culture and/or her unabashed adoration of the UK into her stories. She currently resides in the lovely mountains of southwestern VA, where she is the wife, mom to five great kids, a speech-language pathologist, and a lover of chocolate, jazz, hats, and Jesus.Connect with Pepper by visiting pepperdbasham.com to follow her on social media and subscribe to email updates.

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Author Q&A

CB: Hello, Jaime and Pepper, I’m thrilled to have you both on the blog. I have so many questions for both of you! I really want to dive into these two YA romances. 

Unless I’m missing something, neither of you are known in the young adult (YA) space (yet!). Why did you decide to jump into the YA arena?

Jaime: You’re correct! Although, I will say I have quite a few YA who do read my Gothic mysteries. However, I jumped into YA RomCom primarily because of my daughter, Chloe, who reads voraciously but struggles to find romances that aren’t thick with swearing, sex, and other inappropriate behaviors. Plus, she loves baseball and was very grieved there were few romances with baseball as the featured sport. Thus, Love & Baseball was born. I’ve also been in youth ministry for over thirty years with my husband and I love connecting with youth. There is such a need for fiction that espouses Godly values instead of so much of the fiction out there that leaves our youth floundering with untruths, compromised morality, questionable integrity, and dysfunctional relationship examples.

Pepper: I like to joke around and say “Jaime Jo made me do it”, but the truth is that I’ve had YA ideas for years and just hadn’t had the courage or time to write one. I MADE the time for this one at Jaime’s nudging, and I’m so glad I did (I had to REALLY work up the courage). The YA audience is one of my favorite groups of people. 

CB: How are you approaching faith and romance differently in your YA books? 

Jaime: Chloe and I chose to write Love & Baseball with a gentle approach toward faith in an effort to have a book that young adults could share with friends who may not have been raised with a working knowledge of Christ. We centered on Biblical principles and lifestyles, but we also don’t shy away from the pressures facing our youth today. As for romance, while I’m all “you don’t even need to date when you’re in high-school”, the reality is, most young adults will. So we approach the topic of romance with the concept of friendship as a foundation and a far less passionate approach toward physical expression. Opting for a sweet kiss over make-out scenes, and preferring to make butterfly-in-the-stomach moments over unnecessary passion.

Pepper: I don’t know that I’m approaching faith any differently. In fact, it’s more overt in The Cinderella Plot than it is in some of my adult books. But I’m keeping the romance a bit lighter since my characters are younger and this is more like their first serious romantic experience. 

CB: What do you want parents and guardians to know about your books for their teens? 

Jaime: Obviously, we want them to feel safe when they let their young adults read our novel. Working with my daughter who is sixteen, it was super helpful to have the perspective of what appeals to teen readers versus a parental point of view for every scene. Parent/teen relationships are portrayed in a more traditional environment, where the father isn’t a moron but rather a leader, the mom fulfills her position as strong and capable with equal responsibility but a different role, and conversations about “church” and “youth group” are organically woven through without being overtly evangelical.

Pepper: That this particular book focuses on identity in Christ versus what the world/social media may promote. And that there is teen sarcasm (so if you don’t like sarcasm, this may not be the book for you). I also loved writing healthy and unhealthy parent relationships, because our world is made of both, and we need to be reminded that God is still in control, regardless. 

CB: Jaime, in Love and Baseball, you work with your daughter Chloe JoAnne, what was that experience like?

Jaime: It was super fun! Chloe isn’t a natural writer and composing a sentence to her is more like completing a mathematical equation. But she is a story builder. When she asked me to write Love & Baseball, the agreement was she would feed me the story and I would put it to paper. It became a fun opportunity for us to plot and brainstorm together, for Chloe to read and influence scenes from a teen’s perspective, and for me to let my inner child fly free.

CB: Brielle is being pushed into getting a boyfriend by family members. As a mother, my daughter not having a boyfriend was my top priority. So maybe too far in the other direction. Why did you choose the boyfriend pushing aunts as one of Brielle’s challenges? 

Jaime: LOL. I’m of the bent that boyfriends in high school are a trial waiting to happen, and we’ve always encouraged Chloe to pursue friendships over exclusivity. However, that isn’t the norm anymore, and the reality is, most girls reading romance are being shown that dating is also synonymous with physical expression and an introduction to intimacy that is unhealthy. I’ve seen adults—especially women—really feed this concept of high-school “love” and the examples of the aunts in the book are ones I’ve seen often. We put them in “aunt” form, but they come in many different ways from adult women who get caught up in the burgeoning romance of young love. I think this is dangerous and as adult women, we need to be encouraging our younger women to be pursuing their own development mentally, emotionally, and spiritually before goading them into romances.

CB: I love a good fake boyfriend trope and incorporating AI is genius. I haven’t read that in books aimed for adults but I can see why this would appeal to teens. What is the meet cute that makes Brielle and Brooks realize that AI created a “fake” version of Brooks? 

Jaime: AI is such a thing now, in the young adult world, so it was fun to make it relevant in a way that was also followed by a popular trope. The meet-cute is actually pretty straightforward, but sets the story up for a lot of trouble. Brielle is annoyed by her aunts pushing boyfriends and romance in her direction, so she takes her “dream guy” and drops it into AI for fake photos she can share. Brooks is new in town and new to high-school and when they meet up in the hall of school, he has no idea that he is—essentially—the doppelganger to Brielle’s made-up AI version of a boyfriend.

CB: Pepper, in The Cinderella Plot, Paisley gets a self-help book that will teach her to transform from a wallflower into a social butterfly. What drew you to the self-help plot?  

Jaime: I’ve raised 2 girls, (and 3 boys, but they don’t struggle with this as much as girls) and though they’re both pretty confident people, it’s easy to measure yourself by the world’s standards as far as beauty, skills, and popularity. Unfortunately (and I mean ME too here), we are much quicker to look outside of the Bible for ‘tips’ before going to our Heavenly Father. I wanted to show the difference between measuring oneself by a more superficial stick rather than a Godly one, and see how that could shape Paisley’s heart, because I feel this is a struggle many women have (especially in midde/high school). 

CB: Bookstores, books, and knowledge quietly shape Paisley’s world. How did your own love of books influence the heart of this story?

Pepper: Oh goodness! I adore books. I think if I had the money, I’d own my own bookshop!! As a little girl in a very small place in Appalachia, books helped me travel and experience other places and people, but I know my love for story came even earlier. It’s kind of in my bones as a little girl sitting at the feet of my Appalachian storytelling granny. I fell in love with “story” through her, I think. And then I absorbed the world through reading stories later. 

CB: The premise plays with ideas of confidence, identity, and self-perception. What themes were most important for you to explore while writing this story?

Pepper: The idea that if our identity is uncertain, we are often not seeing truth clearly. That’s why it’s so important to weigh ideas/thoughts by the Truth. (Philippians 4:8). Our human standards are going to be discolored by sin, so we don’t always perceive what is right or good in the clearest ways, especially when it comes to ourselves, which then leads us into all sorts of trouble 🙂 I need this reminder DAILY, if not hourly. We are loved, held, secure, treasured, and adored by our Heavenly Father and He truly does have our best interests at heart. 

CB: Jaime, Pepper: What do you want young women to come away with after reading your books? 

Jaime: I want them to come away with exposure to values of character, like integrity, respect, and honoring one another and adults in their lives. I also want them to come away with that old-fashioned (don’t tell my daughter I said this lol) feeling I had when I watched Anne of Green Gables and walked away with happy-sighs and dreamy feelings about Gilbert. I mean, there’s something to be said about that first love, when it’s sweet and honorable, isn’t it?

Pepper: What I want readers to come away with reading any of my books. Hope. Our God is a god of hope. We are not alone and we are SEEN by Him…even in our messes, and still loved. No situation is beyond His power to transform into something beautiful for His kids. 

CB: Thank you both for this fun interview. I wish you both great success with your books. Even though I’m the opposite of a young adult, I look forward to reading them.

Thank you to JustRead Publicity Tours for connecting me with Jaime and Pepper.

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What a great interview! I love having these opportunities to connect with our favorite Christian authors about their writing and faith. I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.