Kiss. Marry. Kill.

Nineteen-year-old June Eyermann has always known exactly which of her favorite Byronic heroes goes where. She’d kiss moody and possessive Rochester from Jane Eyre and marry prideful but repentant Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, leaving obsessive and spiteful Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights to be chucked off a cliff—but no. She couldn’t leave any of her heroes behind. She lives for her favorite fictional worlds.

But June is about to get a serious wake up call when she returns home for the summer after her college freshman year. Stuck somewhere between feeling like a kid again under her parents’ roof and being forced to start acting like an adult with worries about her future career, June looks at the library volunteer position offered to her as a way to keep her sanity for the next few months before she can go back to school.

What June doesn’t expect to find at the library is her favorite romantic heroes brought to life—all in the same man. Obstinate, prideful and even a bit rude, Everett Rockford shouldn’t exactly be “dating material,” even if June’s heart rate accelerates whenever she’s near him. But after discovering his enigmatic past and witnessing a few fiery moments of tenderness, June can’t help but see Rochester, Darcy and even Heathcliff in Everett. If she’s going to make it through the summer without becoming a tragic heroine in her own story, she has to separate the man from the ideals of fiction in her head. Because if there’s one thing she knows about Byronic love stories, it’s that they don’t always end happily ever after.

What stripe of romance novel is this?
New Adult Contemporary Romance.

What kind of readers will it appeal to?
Lovers of romance and coming of age stories, as well as avid readers and fans of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters.

Tell us about June.
June’s at that age where the line between being a kid and an adult gets murky. She’s trying her best to get through college, even though she’s not happy with the program her parents basically picked out for her. She’s obsessed with reading three classic books: Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights. So much so, she’s starting to feel like she’s living famous scenes from these novels.

The last thing she needs when she comes home for the summer is a relationship, but between seeing her hot (younger) ex-boyfriend everywhere and the attractive kind-of-jerk she literally crashes into at the library, her love life isn’t going to be confined to the pages this season.

Everyone who loves Jane Austen – and isn’t that everyone? – will identify a bit with June; but how much of your personality is in her?
I’m definitely an avid reader and I share a love for Byronic heroes with June. But then I got to thinking last summer and decided no matter how much I swoon over them in fiction, they’d make terrible real-life lovers. Too moody and obsessive! So I thought it’d be fun to write about a woman who has to come to terms with that.

Fair point.
Have you written any other novels?
I write YA under another name. My next Joy Penny release (I hope) should be a new adult with superpowers set at a college. My heroine’s ex-boyfriend is the leader of a group of supervillains, and she’s the only one who can stop him. He also won’t let her have much of a dating life.

We like the sound of that – exciting and different. Can’t wait to read it.
Tell us about yourself.
I spend most of my days writing, both for work and for fun. I read, play video games, devour TV shows and have a lot of geeky interests.

That’s obvious!
Do you have a website?
http://joypenny.wordpress.com

And Twitter?
@JoyPennyWriter.

How easily do new storylines come to you? If we give you four random words – Man, Woman, Mexico, Future – can you give us a brief storyline?
Two hundred years from now, scientists have made it so people can sleep through the boring parts of life. Everyone enjoys dreaming while their bodies continue to work and study. Eventually, people start abusing the system, sleeping during painful things, too, and almost never waking up. One day, a man and a woman accidentally stay up longer than most people and discover there are aliens taking over people’s bodies while they’re asleep. They’re soon on the run to Mexico, where there’s a rumor there are people who never sleep so they can fight the invasion.