In the second part of my interview with author Suzanne Brockmann we talk about her book "All Through the Night" and a favorite character in the Troubleshooters series.
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT WAS A LABOR OF LOVE
Author Suzanne Brockmann is a gay rights activist with a strong commitment to working towards a time when everyone has the freedom of choice. For many years she has worked with several 
organizations, including MassEquality, to achieve this goal.
Before the book All Through the Night was even a thought in her head, there were significant political happenings in the state of Massachusetts. One state, she said “where people can marry the person they love." At the time, a ballot to stop marriage equality was initiated and going up for a vote in the state legislature. Ms. Brockmann and her husband Ed Gaffney joined forces with MassEquality to educate the legislature about a subject that is very important to her. Suzanne said, “I’m a mother of a young man who is gay and I love that kid and I deserve the right to dance at my son’s wedding and he has the right to spend the rest of his life with the person he loves and to have that relationship be recognized. So a lot of what we did with MassEquality was to make it personal, to not keep silent, to say, I love my son and he’s gay.”
Fighting for something you believe in often means educating people so she helped raise money for an educational video. Being an author, going to the phone banks and making calls for donations wasn't the best way for her to achieve this. Instead she sat at her desk and wrote the book All Through the Night.
In All Through the Night we get what we didn’t get in the previous book Force of Nature. We get Jules and Robin as the Hero and Hero of their own book. Suzanne said “I felt apologetic to readers with Force of Nature because I really wanted to give Jules and Robin their own book; I thought it was time to do that. But, instead I gave Jules his happy ending in a sub- plot of Force of Nature and it felt wrong to me. So I decided to tell the story of their wedding.” She pitched the idea to her publisher who for some years had wanted her to write both a Christmas themed book and a wedding. With All Through the Night her publisher got two for the price of one and they were on board. She asked for an advance up front so she could produce the video to, “show people this message of, meet me, get to know me, and then tell me my son shouldn’t be allowed to marry the person he loves.” To this day every penny of her share earned from both the book and the audio book goes to MassEquality.
TO KNOW JULES CASSIDY IS TO LOVE JULES CASSIDY
Introducing people to new ideas, or things they’re not familiar with is not always easy. Its hard work, and you have to stay the course, and as an author and activist Ms. Brockmann has certainly done that. 
With great care and thought, Ms. Brockmann introduced her gay character Jules Cassidy into the Troubleshooters books. Jules is a pivotal character in the series and he’s also a favorite among readers. However, the first time she gave us a look into his romantic relationship she lost readers. The bright spot? She said “I gained more than I lost”.
We first get to know Jules as Alyssa’s FBI partner, the gay asexual ‘side-kick’, but through the course of the series we gain an in-depth look at the man he really is. She said, “What I wanted to do was take a Mass Equality approach to Jules – get to know me”. She gave her readers several ways to get to know Jules. Certainly from his own point of view, and of course through his partner Alyssa’s. But I think the most important one, the one that gave us the flip side, was Sam Starrett’s (Gone Too Far ) point of view. Here is this strong, take charge, homophobic, conservative Navy SEAL who loves Alyssa, and in loving Alyssa he has to deal with her partner and best friend – Jules.
Brockmann explained to me, “I purposely made Sam homophobic… and here’s Jules who is out and an FBI agent, and Sam’s like, ‘don’t touch me dude’. But Sam’s feelings are based on ignorance and based on not really understanding and not knowing someone who is gay. As Sam gets to know Jules, he gets to trust Jules and he sees how great Jules is. So what I did was allow those readers to take that journey with Sam, readers who may come from a conservative place, having beliefs that come from ignorance because they hadn’t even thought about what it means to be gay and how it’s not a choice - that you are born this way. Sam puts that voice in their head; as he gets to know Jules he’s kind of like, ‘Hey you know what, you’re OK’. And then Sam realizes, ‘Hey you’re not just OK, you’re my really good friend’.”
Many readers took that journey with Sam, and by the time the book Into the Night was released, a book in which we discover Jules is living with a man, readers come to know Jules as more than just an asexual side kick. This is where we learn Jules' live-in boyfriend Adam has left him. Introducing this story arc, Brockmann lets us see that Jules is broken hearted and the relationship he had with Adam wasn’t just about sex, is was about love. As Brockmann said, “we see Sam process this”. As readers we see through Sam’s eyes the emotional loss that Jules has suffered, and like Sam, we begin to gain a deeper understanding of Jules.
Ms. Brockmann’s well thought out plan was to give her readers, over the course of several books, a thorough exploration of every facet of Jules’ journey so, “over a long period of time we get to know and trust Jules and realize it doesn’t matter -- if we trust and love Jules, so what if he’s gay.”
END OF PART TWO – PLEASE JOIN ME ON FRIDAY FOR PART THREE
Coming up: Living with another novelist, what’s next for the Troubleshooters and Fighting Destiny
(You can view part one of this interview here.)
To learn more about Suzanne Brockmann visit:
