CHARACTER INTERVIEW WITH PAMELA FAGAN HUTCHINS' EMILY PHELPS BERNAL

ABOUT THE BOOK

USA Best Book Award-Winning Series, Cross Genre Fiction.

A heartfelt mystery from the bestselling and award-winning author of the What Doesn't Kill You romantic mystery series.

Big-haired paralegal and former rodeo queen Emily has her life back on track. Her adoption of Betsy seems like a done deal, her parents have reunited, and she’s engaged to her sexy boss Jack. Then client Phil Escalante’s childhood buddy Dennis drops dead, face first into a penis cake at the adult novelty store Phil owns with his fiancée Nadine, one of Emily’s best friends. The cops charge Phil with murder right on the heels of his acquittal in a trial for burglarizing the Mighty is His Word church offices. Emily’s nemesis ADA Melinda Stafford claims a witness overheard Phil fighting with Dennis over a woman. Before he can mount a defense, Phil falls into a diabetic coma, leaving Nadine shaken and terrified. Meanwhile Betsy’s ultra-religious foster parents apply to adopt her, and Jack starts acting weird and evasive. Emily feels like a calf out of a chute, pulled between the ropes of the header and the heeler, as she fights to help Phil and Nadine without losing Betsy and Jack.

ABOUT THE CHARACTER

Emily is a disgraced paralegal and former rodeo queen who tucks tail and moves back to her hometown in West Texas when her Dallas husband leaves her for a woman who turns out to be a man. She works for Jack, a secretive criminal attorney and sexy mix of cowboy and Indian, and is trying to adopt Emily, a six-year old little girl from Mexico. Emily flounders a bit through her divorce, miscarriage, local gossip, adoption woes, and romantic ups and downs, but she has the love and support of the world’s best friends: CPS Investigator Wallace, strip club bartender Nadine, her former boss Katie who left the practice of law to move to the islands, sexy fish-out-of-water Ava, and tough-as-nails Michele. And when the chips are down, Emily is resourceful, a little bit spiritual, and a whole lot reckless, as she kicks ass and takes names.     

INTERVIEW WITH EMILY PHELPS BERNAL

Emily, how did you first meet Pamela?
I met Pamela when she was writing about my best friend, Katie, in Saving Grace, the first book in the What Doesn’t Kill You series.

What do you like to do when you are not being actively read somewhere?
My idea of heaven is riding Jack’s horse Jarhead on a gorgeous spring day in the mountains of New Mexico.

What impression do you make on people when they first meet you? How about after they've known you for a while?
I hate to admit it, but I think people think I’m a dumb blonde. But after they know me, I think they get me and see that I’m capable. I think I actually surprise them, but mostly because they don’t imagine me as someone who can rope, ride, and shoot.

What's the worst thing that's happened in your life?
When my daddy left us. That was the worst. My divorce was bad, and my miscarriage was horrible. But wondering if my daddy was even alive, if I’d ever see him again? Losing my hero? That was the worst. It really taught me to rely on myself, though. I knew that nothing was necessarily forever. 



Tell us about your best friend.
Well, my best friend ever is Katie, who used to be my boss. I soaked a lot of her tipsy tears into my shoulder, let me tell you. She’s got it together now, but she lives so far away on St. Marcos in the Virgin Islands. My local best friend is Wallace, and oh-my-God he’s hilarious. He’s got this giant heart for kids—he works as an Investigator for Child Protective Services—and an obsession for neatness. But bless his heart, he’s a single gay man in Amarillo, so he’s as much of an outcast as I am as the divorcee whose husband left her for a woman who turned out to be a man. 



What are you most afraid of?
That I’ll end up alone, without Betsy or Jack.



What do you like best about Jack?
I love Jack’s eyes and his enormous heart.

Least?I like least that he is cryptic and secretive. I wish I could get him to just open up to me.

If your story were a movie, who would play you?
Kate Hudson would be my top choice, but Reese Witherspoon could pull it off, too.

Describe the town where you live.
Amarillo: flat, windy, smells like cow poop, and a church on every block.

Describe an average day in your life.
Since I’ve been working for Jack, there’s been nothing but chaos. I’ve been drugged, kidnapped, shot at, stalked, and had to escape with Betsy on horseback from a human trafficker’s ranch and save two foster kids from a bad cop in an abandoned mine. I’m not sure there are even average days anymore.

What makes you stand out from any other characters in your genre?
I think readers will find that out in Hell to Pay, though I cringe to admit that my special skill is snake handling. Don’t ask, because I refuse to say another word about it.

Will you encourage your author to write a sequel?
I hope she writes about my dear new friend Laura. She was a champion jockey, and she and her husband are adopting a teenage girl. But she wants to start an equi-therapy camp for kids on Jack’s ranch. She’s asked me to help her, and I think it’s the greatest idea ever.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Writer of overly long e-mails, romantic mystery series, and (possibly) hilarious nonfiction. Resides deep in the heart of Nowheresville, Texas and way up in the frozen north of Snowheresville, Wyoming. Passionate about great writing and smart authorpreneurship as well as long hikes with her hunky husband and pack of rescue dogs, her Keurig, and traveling in the Bookmobile.

Connect with Pamela:
Website  |  Blog  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Goodreads  

Buy the book:
Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble 

Character Interview with Pamela Fagan Hutchins' Emily Bernal

About the character

Disgraced paralegal and former rodeo queen Emily Bernal moves back in with her very conservative, religious mother in her West Texas hometown when her husband cleans out their bank accounts and cheats on her with another woman, who turns out to be a man. Broke and desperate, she resists going to work for sexy criminal attorney Jack Holden, at first, until she learns his illegal immigrant client’s six-year-old daughter is missing. Emily becomes obsessed with finding the girl and tracks her through a trail of dead bodies across two states.

Interview with Emily from Heavens to Betsy

Emily, how did you first meet Pamela?
Pamela and I met when she wrote about my friend, Katie Kovacs. I thought she nailed Katie, although, at the time, Katie was super embarrassed about having her whole humiliating life made fodder for the reading public. Alcoholism, totally blowing a celebrity trial in Dallas, and getting rejected big time by the man she was in love with. It was some heavy stuff, but funny. I never told Katie how hard I laughed reading it, so let’s keep that our little secret.

Deal. Want to dish about Pamela?
I can suddenly understand where Katie was coming from about Pamela now. I tried to move back home and put my past behind me, and suddenly I’m reading about Rich and his transvestite lover Stormy and me, and I just know people think I’m the world’s biggest idiot not to have seen it coming. And living with my mother, who thinks she’s the Church Lady but looks more like an aging stripper. It’s all a little much when everyone’s talking about you like that, you know?

Did you ever think that your life would end up being in a book?
The only way I thought I’d be in a book was if I made it on the professional rodeo circuit. I rodeoed all through college, and I won the Southwest Conference in barrel racing my senior year, and my dad was a professional rodeo cowboy. But Dad ran off when I was a teenager, and when Rich asked me to marry him, I gave up rodeo. So who would want to write a book about a paralegal? Because that’s what I became. B-O-R-I-N-G. Or so I thought, until I went to work for Jack.

Tell us about your favorite scene in the book.
I’ll have to tell you about my second favorite, because my favorite would be a spoiler for the ending. In my second favorite scene, my high school nemesis turned Assistant District Attorney, the annoyingly perfect Melinda Stafford, confronts me about the wrong thing at the wrong time, and I swear it was the meds I was on, but POW, I popped her one, fist to the jaw. My new best friend Wallace—he’s a CPS investigator, and gay, which isn’t easy in West Texas—nearly died. I’d wanted to do that since I was twelve.

Did you have a hard time convincing your author to write any particular scenes for you?
I had this one really awesome night with my boss Jack, before I messed up the relationship by spending time with someone he was jealous of. Pamela thought that was a little too private, but once I told her I fell asleep before he could get his boots off, she was OK with it. But we made out like crazy before then, and after I regained consciousness. In my defense, I had been pregnant, so I hadn’t had a thing to drink in awhile.

What do you like to do when you are not being actively read somewhere?
I love my job. I always thought criminal law was kind of smarmy, but Jack makes it sexy. We really help people, you know? It’s really more about constitutional law when you think about due process, right to a trial by jury, and all that other constitution stuff. Well, that, and what politician is spending the night with prostitutes and which wealthy business has a kleptomaniac for a wife.

Juicy stuff! Tell the truth. What do you think of your fellow characters?
When I first met Jack, I didn’t like him much, but he grew on me, to say the least. And I always liked his killer dimple. Wallace, I adore. Nadine, who waits tables at a Thai restaurant by day and slings drinks at a gentleman’s club by night, is the BOMB. She’s a biker chick at heart but a mother and a volunteer for underprivileged kids. I’m pretty lucky when it comes to my fellow characters.



What impression do you make on people when they first meet you? 
People think I’m a dumb blonde at first, but they get over it pretty quickly.

How about after they've known you for a while?
Once they’ve known me awhile, they figure out that I’m the one they want to have around in a fight, or when somebody needs to do something, although the somethings I choose are occasionally in legally gray areas. I get things done.

What's the worst thing that's happened in your life? What did you learn from it?
My dad left us when I was sixteen. He was my hero. For the first few years, he still called and wrote and sent birthday and Christmas presents. Then, when I turned twenty-two, he disappeared for good. I’ve never heard from him since. What have I learned? Well, between him leaving and my husband leaving, I’ve learned that I have to rely on myself. And that I can. I’m a lot stronger than most people think.



What are you most afraid of?
It hurts to even talk about it, but I’m most afraid of not having children. I’m thirty, unmarried, and no children.

What do you like best about Jack, your boss? Least?
I love Jack’s discretion and loyalty, and how he looks in his jeans. I adore his lopsided smile and the way he gets a dimple on the left side of his face when he raises his left eyebrow. I cannot stand the way the man cannot answer a simple question with a straight answer to save his life. And I absolutely hate how discreet and private he is. But those jeans and the left side of his face make up for it.


Does he have a brother you could introduce me to? If your story were a movie, who would play you?
Emma Stone, for sure.

Describe the town where you live.
Windy. Smells like cows. Gets as much snow as most of Colorado. Home of the American Quarter Horse Museum. In the heart of Friday Night Lights fever. Big enough to lull you into complacency and small enough that you run into your high school boyfriend at the gas station. And the absolute nicest people you’ll meet anywhere in the entire world.

Will you encourage your author to write a sequel?
I don’t think I have a choice in the matter — she’s already written one and is on a third! She promises after that she’s done. I will just have to try really, really hard not to do anything worth writing about. To her credit, some amazing things happened to me. In Heaven to Betsy, our client, Sofia, was murdered in jail, orphaning her missing daughter. They had both emigrated illegally from Mexico, and no one seemed to care about finding the girl but me. Then in Earth to Emily, two teenage runaways witnessed the murder of a truck driver and turned to me for help, throwing me into a world of interstate trafficking of stolen goods and dirty cops. And in Hell to Pay, a militant religious group is targeting people and businesses to ruin, and our client gets in the way. Really, my life isn’t usually this exciting. Or at least it wasn’t until I met Jack.

About the author

Pamela Fagan Hutchins writes award-winning and bestselling romantic mysteries and hilarious nonfiction, and moonlights as a workplace investigator and employment attorney. She is passionate about great writing, smart authorpreneurship, and her two household hunks, husband Eric and one-eyed Boston terrier Petey. She also leaps medium-tall buildings in a single bound, if she gets a good running start.

If you like Sandra Brown or Janet Evanovich for fiction or Erma Bombeck for nonfiction, you're going to love Pamela.



Connect with Pamela
Website  |  Blog  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Goodreads