I am so excited to introduce y’all to Jaycee Weaver today!
You can connect with Jaycee on her website, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter.
The Everyday Love Series features stand-alone stories of regular people experiencing life, love, and faith in their everyday lives in very real ways.
Nursing student Brynn Easton’s overachieving nature makes giving God control over her goals, dreams, and compulsive lists a constant challenge, but she’s trying. Between school, her increasingly absentee but otherwise perfect boyfriend, Caleb, and a childcare job she adores, her full life feels on track. But then she gets to know the charming single father of the most lovable boy she’s ever taught.
After the birth of his son, Josh Davis rededicated himself to God and has worked hard to get his life together. He’s avoided dating, but Brynn draws him in like no one else. Problem is, he can’t seem to find the nerve to get beyond the friend zone.
Can they move their friendship beyond past choices and pain and figure out what it truly means to walk in God’s will for their lives—especially when finding love and forever doesn’t look like they think it should?
Gina Hernandez is no stranger to hard work. She’s got three jobs to prove it. Trauma in her teens may have left her with severe anxiety and some body image issues, but no one can say she’s not a fighter. Her life has never been easy. It’s what’s made her strong.
Then she meets youth pastor Jaydon Bennett, a gentle giant with a big beard and an even bigger heart—though it does have a few scars. He’s never doubted God could bring him the perfect woman, he just never thought He really would. Until Gina.
When Jaydon encounters a troubled teen whose family is in crisis, he and Gina have to figure out if maybe the painful pasts they’ve been dealing with just might equip them to help this hurting family.
Hi Jaycee! Welcome to the blog! I’m delighted to have you here!
Jaycee: Oranges. I’m pretty sure the scent of oranges is right up there with coffee and freshly baked cinnamon rolls. It makes me feel fresher, cleaner, and happier. As long as I don’t have to be the one to peel them….
Carrie: the smell of oranges reminds me of Christmas ♥
Jaycee: No question, summer. I mean, fall is my absolute favorite season, but summer is a very close second. I’m a totally desert rat and love sunshine, warmth and flip flops.
Carrie: Ok, I’ll give you fall as the absolute best. But …. winter. Snow. Hot chocolate. Cozy quilts. Fireplaces. 😉
Jaycee: While I definitely like and have an obscenely large collection of flavors of both, coffee wins. Einstein Bagels’ Vanilla Hazelnut is pretty much the most delicious thing on the planet and I wish they sold it in a Costco sized bag!
Carrie: haha! I so badly want to love coffee or tea but i just don’t. They are right up there with summer haha!
Jaycee: I have a stronger opinion on this than most people have on politics. TP should only ever be loaded OVER. THE. TOP. I may or may not use an under loader’s facilities and compulsively fix it. I admit nothing.
Carrie: <whispers> I’m an under-loader <hides>
Q: Around here I like to say that reading is my superpower. If YOU had a superpower, what would it be?
Jaycee: Oooh, that’s a hard one. It’s a tie between being easily distracted (squirrel!) and the ability to come up with things on the fly. I think my Jedi skills are slightly more developed in the former, but the latter is more practical. It comes in handy when the kids come home with a school project, I dissect crafts I see on Pinterest, or crave a dinner or dessert when I don’t feel like following a recipe (which is always. I hate using recipes).
Carrie: oooo i am tethered to recipes – i am not talented in the kitchen at all
Q: When you walk into a bookstore, where do you head first?
Jaycee: Surprisingly, even being a voracious reader of several books a week, I always head to the impulse buys first. I’m like a fish with a shiny lure, reeled in by the pens and notebooks and accessories with punny sayings. I’ll stand there and touch each notebook like it holds the key to the universe and read every single trinket printed with a one liner. Every. Stinking. Time.
Carrie: I suffer from the same malady! lol
Q: If I sneaked a peek in your purse right now (which I would never do, I promise!), what would it tell me about you?
Jaycee: Ha ha! I love this question. It would tell you I make valiant attempts at being organized, but tend to fail miserably. It would tell you I’m a chewing gum addict, as evidenced by the three different flavors currently occupying a pocket I sewed specifically for it. It would show you twice as many pens and mascara tubes as any other object, and that I could probably survive on a deserted island with just the one big bag. The purse that I probably made (because I like slouchy bags with lots of pockets that have a bit of flair and yet go with everything) would probably tell you everything you ever wanted to know and then some, actually.
Carrie: Hahaha! love it.
Q: What surprised you about your books or your characters as you wrote their story?
Jaycee: This is my favorite thing about writing! I love when I begin a story with a vague idea what it’s going to be about and the characters completely take over. For example, in Whatever Comes Our Way, I knew Gina had been molested as a preteen and dealt with some body image issues. I did not know that she’d suffered from anxiety attacks until I started writing. I knew her mother had been mostly absentee, but I didn’t realize the extent of her grandparents’ role in her early years and how their deaths changed everything for her! It’s always fun when I’m writing and I get stuck, take a break, and then suddenly it’s like they poke me in the shoulder and say, “Um, excuse me, but…” and BAM, I have the solution.
Carrie: I think that is so cool, the way characters talk to their authors 🙂
Q: Did you have the whole plot outlined before you started writing, or did you let the characters dictate what came next?
Jaycee: This kind of goes with the other question. With What Could Be, the plot sort of outlined itself for me over a few days. I was remembering some past experiences when I was a naïve twentysomething, and it made me wonder what the world would look like for someone who was super innocent and oblivious like I used to be had been faced with similar choices but took a completely different path. Brynn is definitely NOT me, but there is a lot of a younger me in her. The details of her story and Josh’s came to me in bits and pieces as I wrote, and I loved learning about her life and her choices as I went along.
I had no clue other than a very vague outline when I started Whatever Comes Our Way. I knew it would be about Gina Hernandez, Brynn’s best friend, and one day she sort of outlined herself to me a little (as did the guy she would go for). It didn’t hit me until I’d written the first two chapters that she would be paired with Josh’s pastor friend from the first book! And I really didn’t know what he’d been through until it came to me one day while on the phone with my best friend Molly. A lot of plot and character things come to me when we’re on the phone, actually. It makes us both laugh because we start talking like they’re real people we know!
Carrie: hahaha you mean they aren’t?? 😛
Q: The Everyday Love Series is made up of “stories in which a very real God shows Himself in everyday ways to carry His people through any circumstance.” (I love that, btw!) How has God shown Himself in everyday ways to you lately?
Jaycee: Thanks! Oh my gosh, this is where I could get long-winded. I tell people all the time I’m absolutely certain I’m God’s favorite (though I am a firm believer we’re all supposed to feel that way) because He shows up so often in my life in random little ways no one would get but me. He’s so extremely personal, you know?
Not all of my examples are in my author life, but most recently, I was stuck writing a Christmas novella for an upcoming collection and I really hated the story. I begged God to help me figure out why it wasn’t working, and if He had a better story for me to tell, please give it to me and release me from this other one. Well, one evening an entire character sketch for both hero and heroine came to me out of the blue. Within an hour, I had a full plot outline and the entire first chapter written. I heard in my spirit the promise that if I would fast from reading the next week, a whole week (ack!), then He would give me the entire book faster than I’ve ever written anything in my life. Can I just tell you, HE DID?! I wrote the entire 22.7K word novella in two and a half weeks, while having a cold, sick kiddos, and substitute teaching a couple days! God is amazing like that, all the time.
Carrie: He is so sweet. I love Him ♥
Q: What is one of your favorite quotes from the series & why do you love it?
Jaycee: My favorite quote from Whatever Comes Our Way is, “Everyone needs Jesus to meet them right where they are, to heal and rescue and save them; to take their broken messes and make something new.” It’s one of those quotes I didn’t even realize I’d written someone pointed it out, so I knew it was the Lord and not me! I really love this quote because it’s basically my heart for interacting with people. It’s the heart of the gospel, and the deepest cry of humanity. Jesus didn’t stand for uptight religious people pushing an agenda, he met people where they were and loved them into life change. That’s still how He works today, and what I hope my readers will walk away knowing.
Carrie: Amen & Amen. This is my heart’s cry!
Thank you so much for taking time to talk with me! 🙂 Before we say goodbye for today, tell us what‘s coming up next for you.
Jaycee: Heehee! I’m a little giddy about all of it, actually. Coming October 1, Adrift, the first novella in a spin-off series releases. I’m currently working on a Christmas novella (God actually is reworking that first one completely after He gave me the new one! See? He loves me!) and hope to have that available in the beginning of November. Then, November 1st, the Christmas novella collection I’m part of also releases. I don’t have details on it just yet, but people can check back on that soon! And then,…well, poor Caleb from What Could Be is getting his own story in the Everyday Love series for book 3. I am really hoping to have that one ready to go in the spring, but we’ll see. His girl is one hot mess and she hasn’t tapped my shoulder in awhile.
Carrie: I’m looking forward to all of these!
Jaycee Weaver is offering a free advance digital copy of Adrift (the spinoff novella coming October 1st) to one of my readers! Open internationally, except where prohibited my law. This giveaway is subject to Reading Is My SuperPower’s giveaway policies which can be found here. Enter via the Rafflecopter form below.
What about you? Are you an impulse buyer at the bookstore or do you go in with a plan and stick to it?
Oh, I go in w/ a list, but, I’m also an impulse buyer! 🙂
Yep. Me too.
There is no bookstore near me? but I would probably be an impulse buyer.
That’s so sad!! No bookstore 🙁
Wh!h! That is no fun!
Whoops! Totally made types there! Haha! It was supposed to say the right name and WAH! that’s no fun! Haha!
Always have a list, and always find plenty on impulse! Jaycee’s books sound really interesting! Thanks, Carrie, for introducing her to us!