Win a copy of In Over Her Head - Be a member of the NOR newsletter, leave the first bit of your email address on the post, and leave a meaningful comment. USA / Canada Shipping only. No P.O. Boxes. Publisher to ship prize.
Night Owl Romance, June 9 2009
Thanks so much for having me here to talk about In Over Her Head. I’ve done quite a few interviews, most of which have discussed how I came to write this story, including the fact that I have an irrational fear of the ocean due to seeing JAWS at an early age. It ruined the ocean for me. Disney’s The Little Mermaid gave the ocean back and is one of my favorite fairy tales, so I decided to twist that story and make it my own. That’s the story behind the story.
I had to do a lot of research about undersea life and scuba diving and ocean currents, etc., because, thanks to that irrational fear, you won’t catch me with an oxygen tank on my back. The most I can handle is snorkeling and even then it’s touch-and-go. Especially fifteen years ago when I was in Hawaii and everyone neglected to mention there was a moray in Hanauma Bay who was “so well fed” he wouldn’t attack.
Uh huh. Okay. Next time post a sign so I can decide if I want to go in and not have me find out when he poked his six-foot length out to say hello.
I don’t think I ever swam to shore so fast in my life.
Or then there was the time my husband decided to snorkel in a bay off of Cancun that is known to have a barracuda in it. We could see the five-foot 
monstrosity from our balcony, and yet my husband decided to go hang out in the fish’s playground.
You have to understand this about my husband—he loves fish and to fish. We have had a dozen aquariums at any one time, and if he’s got the chance to snorkel, he will.
So, in he went while I hung out on the beach with my mai tai and a stack of books. I can get lost in books for hours.
Turns out, that day, I did. When I came up for air at some point, I realized that I’d read an entire book and he was still out in the water.
I, of course, was convinced the barracuda had gotten him.
So what do I do? (And this may have had something to do with the mai tai.) I head out to rescue him.
Makes no sense, I know, but that’s what I did. (Which, again, may have had something to do with the mai tai.)
So, after about twenty minutes (it was a big bay) of swimming around, all the while calling myself all kinds of idiot for being in the water and what did I think I was going to be able to do when faced with a barracuda (have you seen their mouths?), I find my husband.
Happily swimming along as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.
“Come back to shore,” says I, proud of my adventuresome and intrepid spirit. I’d overcome my fear and was there to rescue him. Ta-da!
“I don’t want to go back to shore.” And he starts swimming around again.
“But you have to,” I say after getting his attention by covering the air hole on his snorkel.
“I came out to rescue you.”
“I don’t need rescuing.”
“But you’ve been out here so long.”
“So?”
“But the barracuda…”
“Is fine. He’s back there. I already took a picture of him.” (These were the days when underwater cameras were new, and technologically challenged, i.e. you had to get reeeeeeeeeal close to get a good picture.)
Needless to say, that started a panic attack. (By this point, any sedative qualities from the mai tai were gone.)
“Well then, you need to come back,” says I, convinced that I am here for the Greater Good.
“No, I don’t. I’m having a good time. You go back.”
“Will you come with me?”
“No. I’m having a good time out here. It’s very interesting.”
“But I came out to get you.”
“But I didn’t ask you to.”
“Well, how am I supposed to go back?”
“The same way you came out. Swim.”
“But there’s a barracuda.”
“And he’s not going to come after you. Go.”
Needless to say, once I caught my breath after the second fastest swim of my life back to shore, I ordered another mai tai.
Or maybe seven.
You can see that the ocean and I have a love/hate relationship. So when I started writing this story about a merman and a woman who’s afraid of the ocean, the afraid-of-the-ocean part was easy.
There wasn’t much more to writing Erica’s fear than putting myself in her place. I could give her every stupid thought I have whenever I’m in the ocean, and it was fun in a morbid sort of way to 
imagine what she’d feel as she descended seventy-five feet at gunpoint then saw a shark.
It was fun because I was safe on land.
Now, if you’ve ever seen JAWS or read Peter Benchley’s book, you know that a great white shark attacks people close to the shore over the 4th of July weekend in a New England town named Amity.
It didn’t require any research because it’s pretty pervasive through society, so almost everyone knows at least what the story is about. Right? Right.
Or so I thought.
I’ve also said in my interviews that I go to the Jersey Shore every year for vacation, and have gone my whole life. I used to love the ocean and would float on a raft for hours, reading (of course!). I still go and I still read, but now I do it in my beach chair, occasionally at the water’s edge, but never on a raft. (I told you it’s an irrational fear.) This was why I set the story at the Jersey Shore.
So, over the weekend, I was doing a little clarification research for the third book in the series, Catch of a Lifetime, and one link led to another (I love getting lost in research, you find such interesting tidbits), and I end up here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Shore_shark_attacks_of_1916which led me to here:
http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/topics/saf_nj_maneater.htmand then to here:
http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=195I stopped after that point. I mean, I’m going to New Jersey on vacation this month, only to find out that JAWS was based on a real event and it just so happens to be at the shore I go to—and am terrified to go in the water at—for what are, apparently, VERY REAL REASONS.
Oh I know that the attacks could happen anywhere; it’s certainly not endemic just to New Jersey, but what’s so funny about this is that this kind of thing happens all the time when I’m doing research. I’ll need something to be a certain way, or somebody to have done something, or what-have-you, and lo-and-behold, there it is. I wish I’d kept a list of all these serendipitous findings I’ve come across because every time one happens, I’m amazed.
So now the story has extra significance for me. A stronger tie-in to New Jersey than just the fact that we love to vacation there.
And we’ll continue to go, but I have to tell you, if a barracuda shows up, I’m out of there.
Too bad Ocean City, NJ is a “dry” town; not a mai tai to be had.
A barracuda excerpt from In Over Her Head:
Erica poked her head out the door and around the corner of her prison. Whatever Reel had done to her system to make it possible for her to breathe had also amped up her night vision, so while she couldn’t see as well as in daylight, it was definitely more than shadows. That was going to come in handy as this little escape mission progressed. Especially since she had no weapons except for a piece of coral she hadn’t managed to break, no clue what was waiting for her, and, oh yeah, there was that whole sea monstress thing…
Part of her wanted to slink back inside the room and hang out in the hammock until Reel came to find her. The other part recognized that she’d cut the hammock, wrecked the door and, if she did decide to stay here and wait, Ceto was not going to be pleased to have her home destroyed. She was screwed either way.
Better to head down her own path to destiny than to let destiny decide it for her.
She pushed the niggling little voice inside her head out of the way when it reminded her that those kinds of thoughts were exactly what’d gotten her in trouble in the first place. If she hadn’t wanted to prove something so badly, she never would’ve taken the charter and thrown Grampa’s ashes—and Joey’s diamonds—overboard. But then she’d still be the scaredy-cat landlubber her brothers always teased her for being.
She stuck her head out the door again. The gobies were nowhere to be seen and a lone crab scuttled across the sea floor a couple dozen feet below her, dragging a remnant of some sea creature.
The barracudas had brought her in from the left, so she’d head that way. New bravado aside, she needed her weapons and those were by the entrance near Reel.
Rounding the corner of her prison cell, Erica remembered to check each direction before crossing the corridor—left, right, and up and down. No one. The crab had disappeared, too.
Hanging a right at the next corridor, Erica stole a look out another narrow window to where Ceto had put the small bag in the garden wall.
She should get the diamonds first then find Reel.
A long, black-and-white-spotted eel slithered up the wall, pulled the sea urchin from the hole, swam in, turned around, and poked its polka-dotted head out in time to catch the urchin before it hit the bottom. Then it began to pick the spines off and spit them out like porcupine quills.
Retrieve the diamonds. Yeah, that should be a piece of cake.
“Why Ceto wants anything to do with Spare is beyond me, Rasgo.” The words echoed off the walls, and she recognized the voice underwater.
Dropping ten feet, she slid in behind a trio of orange barrel sponges, pulling her dark hair around her face and shoulders as Carlos and Rasgo glided by.
“You’d think she’d kill him just because she can, but no. The woman was all about planning a big seduction. Ugh. The thought of it makes my scales trawl.”
“But then she left. Maybe she’s changed her mind and will let us have him,” Rasgo said, grinning. “She’s already promised me the other Human’s limbs. I’ve never tasted a female one.”
“Eh.” Carlos shrugged. “They’re scrawnier than their male counterparts. Taste like flounder.”
© Judi Fennell, June 2009, Sourcebooks Casablanca
About The Author:
Judi Fennell has had her nose in a book and her head in some celestial realm all her life, including those early years when her mom would exhort her to “get outside!” instead of watching Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie on television. So she did--right into Dad’s hammock with her Nancy Drew books.
These days she’s more likely to have her nose in her laptop and her head (and the rest of her body) at her favorite bookstore, but she’s still reading, whether it be her latest manuscript or friends’ books.
A three-time finalist in online contests, Judi has enjoyed the reader feedback she’s received and would love to hear what you think about her Mer series. Check out her website at
http://www.judifennell.com/ for excerpts, reviews and fun pictures from reader and writer conferences, and the chance to “dive in” to her stories.
ContestTo celebrate the release of each of her books, Judi Fennell and the Atlantis Inn (
http://www.atlantisinn.com/) and the Hibiscus House (
http://www.hibiscushouse.com/) bed and breakfasts are raffling off three romantic beach getaway weekends. All information is on Judi's website,
http://www.judifennell.com/
Goodie Bag Giveaways items that everyone who purchases one of my books will receive are:
I’m a longtime fan-girl of TV shows based in magic. When I was little, I think I watched every episode of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie multiple times, and as an adult I was an avid weekly watcher of Charmed. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to have started my published writing career with novels about magic, but somehow it did.
Check out the Night Owl Reviews digital magazine. It comes out monthly on the 15th and has exclusive content and interviews.
