Jessica Gibbons, a.k.a. Jess Russell, an award-winning romance novelist tucked away in the mountaintop enclave of Elka Park when not performing on stage with the local Maude Adams Theater Hub.
By Michael Ryan
ELKA PARK - The way to flutter the heart of mountaintop author Jessica Gibbons will not be found in her romance novels.
Gibbons, writing under the pen name Jess Russell, is an award-winning teller of tales set in the Victorian Era and other Historic Periods that scintillatingly (and secretly if need be) explore human dalliances.
While she sometimes taps into her own imaginings, bringing her characters to life, the title of her story, if told in those days, might searingly have been “The Forever Searching Spinster.”
Gibbons, happily married to Patrick and splitting her locations between Elka Park and New York City, smiles when recounting a moment her husband took her breath away.
“It was my birthday. He gave me a very large box wrapped in newspaper,” Gibbons says. “Inside was an 18-inch McCullough chainsaw.”
It sent her into a swoon that no 19th Century ladylove would comprehend, although beneath the skin they are all kindred spirits.
“Some girls like pedicures or massages,” Gibbons says. “Give me a thrift shop or a hardware store and I’m a happy girl.”
Power tools do the trick for this 21st Century woman of letters, who often performs with the local Maude Adams Theater Hub, and is an accomplished seamstress and batik artist.
In her youth, Gibbons was a self-described “Air Force brat,” following her military father around the planet.
Born in Brussels, Belgium, the family resettled from Bangkok, Thailand, to Tullahoma, Tennessee, when she was 13 years old.
“That was a real culture shock.” Gibbons says, finding solace in, “escaping the world of rigorous ballet class and hideous math homework into the haven of reading toe-wiggling romance novels.”
“Now I write them,” Gibbons says, such as “The Dressmaker’s Duke,” her first book, a best-seller that interweaves the inner yearnings of Rhys Merrick, the Duke of Roydan, and Olivia Weston.
The Duke, states an Amazon review, “is determined to be the antitheses of his depraved father, repressing his desires so severely he is dubbed "the Monk" by Society.
“But when Olivia Weston turns up demanding payment for gowns ordered by his former mistress, Rhys is totally flummoxed and inexplicably smitten.
“He pays her to remove her from his house and mind. But logic be damned, he must have this fiercely independent woman!
“Olivia's greatest fear is becoming a kept woman. She has escaped the role of mistress once and vows never to be owned by any man.”
Fate, however, intervenes. “Olivia is forced to barter with the Duke and as their lives weave together, Olivia unravels the man underneath the Monk, while Rhys desires to expose the lady hiding behind the dressmaker.
“Will his raw passion fan a long-buried ember of hope within her? Can this mismatched pair be the perfect fit?” the Amazon review asks.
Gibbons has further penned two books, “Mad for the Marquess” and “Crazy for the Countess,” in what will ultimately be a 4-part series.
Respectfully borrowing her late father’s first name for her literary surname, Gibbons says, “My first idea is still sitting in my computer.
“I didn’t know, when writing a romance novel, the hero and heroine must appear quickly. Mine didn’t meet until page fifty.
“That’s an absolute no-no. And there has to be an HEA, a happily-ever-after ending,” Gibbons says.
“I’d never really written anything before so you dip your toe in the water and then dip it a bit more and a little bit more until you’re all the way in.”
Developing her own “on the spicy side” style, Gibbons says a book idea “usually starts with a scene in my head, and then it writes itself.”
Quite the contrary for her venerable old house in Elka Park where her husband’s family has had a country place since the mid 1930’s.
There is always another complex restoration job to undertake, perhaps laborious to some but for Gibbons, a never-ending happily-ever-after.
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