New York Times best-selling author J.R. Ward of Louisville has many stories in her head—most involving hot, chiseled, sexy vampires. She said she sees these people in her mind’s eye, and it is her job to get their stories down on paper.
With 20 million J.R. Ward-penned books in print in 26 countries, that is a lot of paper.
Ward is the author of 61 books, including The Black Dagger Brotherhood series of paranormal romance novels that focus on a society of vampire warriors.
The native New Englander had an accomplished career before she started writing books.
As a child, Ward liked to tell stories, and after graduating from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, with a double major in art history and history, with a medieval concentration in both, she was encouraged by her mother to publish her work.
“I thought that was ridiculous, so I decided to go to law school,” Ward said.
Her career took her to hospital administration. While she worked in her professional position, she continued writing.
“I wrote as a hobby,” Ward said. “I don’t golf; I don’t drink; and other than running and working out, I don’t really have any other interests.”
Ward’s then-boyfriend, now-husband, Neville Blakemore, found some of her writing and thought it would make a good book. “One of his ex-girlfriends worked for a literary agent in New York, so he got me an intro. They read some of my stuff and agreed to represent me,” she said, “which is still extraordinary to me and proof that you should never burn bridges.”
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When the couple married and moved from Boston to Blakemore’s hometown of Louisville, Ward changed careers and began writing romance novels. After four books that didn’t sell well, Ward was dismissed from her contract. “I received the news in the parking lot of Whole Foods on Shelbyville Road,” she said. “I remember exactly where I was when the phone call came.”
She had given up her law career, moved to what she felt was an almost-foreign land of Kentucky, and didn’t know what to do next. Her agent at the time recommended that she stop trying to write like other authors and find a way to write in her own style.
A huge fan of Stephen King books and anything spooky or scary, Ward struggled to marry that genre with romance. In a Louisville bookstore, she saw books in the romance section about paranormal characters, and she realized that a vampire can be a hero.
“And once that clicked in my head, I was off to the races,” Ward said. “I knew exactly what I wanted to write, and I was very lucky that The Black Dagger Brotherhood showed up in my head.”
Right when she needed them, the characters who populate her books appeared. In describing her writing style, Ward said the stories are presented in short clips, similar to movies, as though she is witnessing their lives firsthand. Then, she puts these bites into chronological order and decides which point of view is the best way to let the book unfold.
But it is not only steamy, sensual, erotic vampires who show up in Ward’s head. Some hunky, rich horse breeders and distillers showed up, too—a result of Ward having lived in the Bluegrass State for a few decades. Thus began her three-book series called The Bourbon Kings.
“It was my love letter to my adopted home,” Ward said of the series that weaves the story of a fictional family who lives in a fictional river city. The affluent and dysfunctional family members carry a great deal of baggage while maintaining their place in society.
Ward has woven into her work a few Easter eggs—or hidden surprises—that Kentucky readers will recognize, such as River Road, Blue Dog Bakery, Joella’s, and a street called Dorn Avenue, a tip of the hat to Louisville’s Zorn Avenue. The family members are fans of the local fictional university’s basketball team, the Eagles, who wear red.
In The Bourbon Kings series, the basketball coach attends a giant pre-horse race brunch at the family estate, which Ward admitted is based on the pre-Kentucky Oaks brunch she and Neville host each year.
This year’s brunch included more than 700 people, all decked out in their Derby finest. “The ladies all come in their beautiful hats and clothes, and the gentlemen all come in pastels,” she said. “But there is a purpose behind it.”
As supporters of nonprofits in Louisville and statewide, Blakemore and Ward invite representatives of those organizations as well as people with significant resources.
Ward said this enables both groups to interact in an elegant but relaxed atmosphere that is cordial and warm, which results in community connections.
After the brunch, Blakemore and guests head over to Churchill Downs for a day at the races while Ward quickly changes back to work mode. “I get out of my dress, hat, and jewelry and get into a pair of PJ bottoms and a Hanes T-shirt, and I’m putting chairs away and taking things down,” she said. “In our family, we believe that everyone rolls their sleeves up, so I work right along with everyone who is packing up the party.”
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Work is central to Ward’s core. She rarely, if ever, takes a day off from writing. Although she has achieved many milestones along the way, she doesn’t pay attention to them because it distracts her from her work, and, she explained, “Work is the basis for everything.”
With the rigor of publishing three books a year, Ward compared her work ethic to a horse wearing blinders so that it sees only what is in front of it.
“I have to keep my brain on a certain track of focus in order to write,” she said. “Once you are on that track, it is about controlling your brain and keeping it locked in.”
Ward never could have predicted the twists and turns her life has taken thus far, both throughout her career and where she put down roots. With ties to Massachusetts and upstate New York, she certainly never thought she would live away from home. When she fell in love with a Kentuckian in the early 2000s, Ward directed him to her mother.
“I said if [my mother] wasn’t moving to Kentucky, then I wasn’t moving to Kentucky,” Ward said. “But she said, ‘All right, let’s go.’ And now she lives here, too.”
Ward has embraced Kentucky, and, although she doesn’t drink, she is enthralled by the Commonwealth’s love of and loyalty to bourbon. She is not a fan of Kentucky’s storms that occasionally create the need for a tornado watch, but she does love the giant, beautiful trees and that the sun sets later here than it does up East.
None of that compares to her love of the University of Louisville Cardinals men’s basketball team. As a season ticket holder, she’s at every home game and admits she’s screaming at the TV while watching away games. She described herself as a “batshit crazy” fan and laughed when recounting that sometimes Blakemore won’t watch with her because she gets so worked up.
However, writing stays Ward’s central focus. New books will continue as new people and stories show up in her head, which she admitted is out of the ordinary but just happens.
She said that you can count on her to tell a story that ends up well, no matter how much life hurts or feels as if it is going nowhere—and that miracles happen. “The good guys still come out on top, and happily-ever-afters are still out there for all of us,” she said.