Author Spotlight - Jennifer Estep and Bigtime

Jennifer Estep's Jinx is the third novel in the Bigtime superhero paranormal romance series. It releases on September 2 as a mass-market paperback.

I have been following the Bigtime series from the start, beginning with the adorable Karma Girl. The original trade paperback cover is to the left, and the mass-market cover is to the right. I reviewed Karma Girl as an as-I-read-it review. Here is a highlight:

"She [Carmen, the progatonist] has the most hilarious sexy dream that I have ever read. And that's only topped by a sex scene that, as I wrote in Jennifer Estep's blog, is the funniest sex scene I've read since Stephanie tried to get it on with Joe the Buick in one of the early Stephanie Plum novels."

That scene, which I dubbed the Condom Scene, I voted as the Best Laugh in my 2007 Best-of Round-Up.

Here is a highlight from the first interview I did with Jennifer Estep:

You seem incredibly prolific. Did you have a bunch of Bigtime novels written ahead of your first sale, or do you have a writing superpower?
I had the first novel, Karma Girl, finished, and a rough draft of the second book, Hot Mama, done. After I sold the first two books, I started working on book three, Jinx, which is coming out in April 2008. Right now, I’m finishing up the fourth book, tentatively called Nightingale, and thinking about book five, Fangirl.

If I had a writing superpower, I’d want it to be superspeed, so I could type a thousand words a minute and write even more!

Next up was Hot Mama. Here are the covers for that novel. It released in November, and then it releases again this month. Here is a highlight from that review:

"One thing that always got a chuckle from me was the amount of food that Fiona has to eat to keep up her fiery metabolism. You can almost read the wishful thinking that the author might have felt. If only we could eat like this all the time and stay a size two (or whatever size Fiona is)."

And here's a snipped of the second interview I did with Jennifer Estep back in November:

I found the change of character a great idea in Hot Mama (although I missed Carmen). Same world, very different character. Personally, I think is such a brilliant concept that it could safely be called a Master Plan. What gave you the idea to write each book about a different character?

Actually, it wasn’t my idea -- at first. I was pitching Karma Girl to an editor at a conference a couple of years ago. She asked me about the potential to develop the book into a series. I told her that I envisioned the series as a trilogy, with each book about Carmen and her coming to grips with her superpowers. That was my brilliant idea.

To which the editor responds: “Or each book could be about a different superhero, too, right?”

What do you think of the old vs. new covers? I kind of have a fondness for the old covers with the stylized artwork, but I only own Karma Girl in non-galley form, so that's the only cover I have. I'm waiting for all three to be available as a boxed set.

I intended to write a review of Jinx tonight, but it somehow turned into a spotlight on the entire series, instead. I'll have that review ready in another day or two.