Jodi Ellen Malpas

Such an unfair question! This Man will always hold a very special place in my heart because Jesse and Ava completely changed my life, and I’ll never forget what happened after I nervously pressed publish back in 2012. The Unlawful Men is a five book dark mafia series, and each book averages 160K words, which is ridiculously big, but those guys seriously got under my skin, and the blend of crime, drama, scandal, sex, romance, kept me entertained (and sane) for four years. God, I love those men! Ironically, at that point in my life I was juggling a lot of emotions and challenges in my private life, so it figures I went dark and gritty at the point. All of my books hold different meanings and relevance to the point in my life when I wrote them. I have to be completely obsessed with the characters and their story or I couldn’t spend months/years living inside their heads. So the short answer is, all of them.

This is possibly even harder because I’m terrible at choosing favourites. I’ve read so many books over the years that have stayed with me for completely different reasons and, again, mark different points throughout my life. Twilight was a biggy for me, as was The Da Vinci Code. My taste is very eclectic.

Completely by accident. I wasn’t an aspiring author. I didn’t have a manuscript tucked away or a lifelong dream of seeing my name on a book. I have always had a vivid imagination and would often be found daydreaming. In fact, some people have been known to say I was aloof and detached as a kid and a young woman, but I was honestly simply lost in my own head much of the time. Then I started writing my thoughts down, and that escalated. Suddenly, I had an outlet, and it felt so incredibly good to be lost in my own, private world. Then this man appeared in my mind, and he wouldn’t leave me alone, so I started writing his story on my laptop or on my phone in my spare time. That story became This Man. It utterly consumed me, and with a nudge from my best friend, I eventually self-published it in October 2012 with absolutely no idea what I was doing or what was about to happen. I did so much wrong! No editing, no professional cover, no marketing. There was no Instagram or TikTok, and self-publishing was quite new too. When I think back now, I have no idea how things escalated so quickly. Readers found Jesse and Ava, things went completely mad, a publisher picked it up, and somehow that little story I wrote for myself became a #1 New York Times bestseller. I suddenly had a career I never anticipated or dared to dream about, and fourteen years and nearly forty books later, I’m still making shit up for a living.

You like impossible questions, I see. I don’t think I have one single favourite author. I’m much more likely to fall completely in love with a particular book, character or story than follow one author religiously.

Genuinely, thank you. Book communities like yours are such a huge part of why authors get to keep doing what we love. Every time you read a book, recommend it, post about it, argue over the characters, fall hopelessly in love with a fictional man covered in red flags, or tell your friends you need to read this, you’re supporting an author. After all these years, it still blows my mind that people across the world pick up characters who once existed only in my head and become as invested in them as I am. So keep reading the dark stuff, keep reading the spicy stuff, and keep embracing your questionable taste in fictional men. And thank you for letting some of mine onto your bookshelves. JEM ❤️