Local author Jeannie Moon’s latest book, All of Me, will be released next Wednesday, Aug. 28.
The third installment of Moon’s Compass Cove series, All of Me returns to the lives of Lilly and Jack in the fictional town of Compass Cove. Whether you’ve followed the series, or are jumping right in, the setting might feel familiar to Long Island natives. “Compass Cove is a small town I invented on the North Shore of Long Island,” said Moon. “It’s a composite of Northport, Huntington, Cold Spring Harbor, and Oyster Bay.”
The choice in location was deliberate: Moon wanted to put Long Island on the romance map. “As far as the small-town romance, nobody thought about Long Island,” she said. “When I looked at incorporating my town, it became a sort of epiphany.”
With a Huntington family line that extends back to the 1920s, Moon thoroughly knows and loves Long Island. “We can get so tied up with the fact that taxes are high or that traffic on the LIE is terrible, and we forget to look around at the community we have,” she said. She especially appreciates the many options within a one hour radius: New York City, beaches, and vineyards. “I don’t have to leave here!” Moon exclaimed. Her mission to bring the history, beauty, and versatility of Long Island to literary life has found a great deal of success. “I can’t tell you the amount of reader mail I get that says, ‘I want to come visit!’”
But All of Me goes beyond being picturesque. “My character, my heroine, is a domestic violence survivor,” Moon said. “Writing this book took me more time, to give it the attention it needed.” In dealing with complex themes, Moon is sure to do her research. “I make sure to interview trauma counselors to get the nuances of survivors and PTSD. I don’t want it to just be a plot device; it has to be more, I want it to be genuine.”
In her writing process, Moon otherwise finds herself in the middle of the plotter vs. pantser dichotomy. “I’m a plantser,” she said. “A little of both.” After some general outlining and research, Moon lets her characters take the reins. “There’s nothing better than when the characters actually take over the narrative,” Moon said. She believes that this experience allows her characters’ emotional lives to be authentic. If she finds herself crying mid-writing, Moon knows her readers will likely be moved too. She even has a friend who measures each of her books by boxes of tissues. The record so far? Two boxes, plus some toilet paper.
While the number of tissues for this read is not yet known, readers are sure to enjoy returning to Compass Cove.
All of Me is available for pre-order through Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. More information about Jeannie Moon, her books, and her upcoming events can be found at JeannieMoon.com
