Whaaaat? Jayne’s alive? REALLY? Yes, really! Sorry about the radio silence for the past several months, but a few tiny things have taken up much of my time, like…oh…completely upending my life and moving to a new house and getting a job and and and…yeah. Read the rest of this entry
I love Julie Valerie’s topic for her blog hop this month. Libraries! Avid writers/readers like me are passionate about libraries! And I’ll bet anything we have similar warm memories of the place—devouring everything in the juvenile section, from Go Dog Go to Judy Blume; discovering our genre of choice that we actually ended up writing as adults, like romance or mystery; meeting our friends there; spending rainy afternoons wandering through the stacks. We can all expound on the feeling of being surrounded by thousands of volumes, the smell of old books, the crinkling sound of the clear plastic covers protecting the hardbacks, the nice (or mean) librarian who always seemed to be behind the counter, the thunk of the card reader.
So, to avoid repeating a tale every library lover knows by heart, I’ll tell you about the time I became a fugitive from a library. In a foreign country. Read the rest of this entry
I was a member of a book club once. It was a glorious five minutes.
I live in a very small village that’s best described as pretty much entirely unlike the idyllic Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls. It’s the Upside Down of Stars Hollow, in fact. No quirky neighbors, not many cute shops, very few fun events. Knitathon for charity? Newp. Picnic basket auction? Nuh-uh. (And don’t even get me started on the sad lack of hunky Luke types.)
Needless to say, when a friend invited me to join a book club, I exclaimed, “There’s a book club?!” and said yes without hesitation. What a rush—a circle of educated, intelligent women spanning the ages of late-thirtysomething through seventysomething, all eager to discuss literature instead of, well, one another/their friends/their relatives/their neighbors—all of those categories overlap, by the way—which is pretty much the official village sport. Read the rest of this entry
When Julie Valerie announced this month’s Fiction Writers Blog Hop theme was “bookstores,” I was so excited. The mere thought of those hallowed retail establishments inspires all the feels in me, because they’re my second home—and not just for shopping. My undergraduate degree was a BA in creative writing, which meant that it was highly likely my first job was going to be at a bookstore, and…yep, it was.
I started out at the Village Green Bookstore in Rochester, NY, for the incredible minimum wage of $3.35 an hour! When I got a whopping 25 cent raise, I thought I’d hit the big time! (Yes, I had to live with my parents, but I loved that job, so it was worth it.) My second bookstore was the Brookline Booksmith, where I worked part time while I was attending Boston College for grad school. And when I became disenchanted with teaching high school, I sought refuge at Borders, once again in Rochester. So after two indie places and a chain store, I kind of know a little bit about bookstores. Here’s the inside scoop: Read the rest of this entry
Squirrelsville – An unnamed gray squirrel lashed out violently today when denied its normally easily obtained meal of sunflower seeds. Read the rest of this entry
Gather ’round, kids—I’m going to let you in on a secret. Okay, it’s not really a secret, because I’m not one to hide this sort of thing: On January 2 of this year, I turned 50.
I KNOW!! Shocked me too!
So I guess I’m an old lady according to some (like my 12-year-old son, who won’t get anywhere close to middle-aged himself if he doesn’t stop calling me that), although I don’t feel very old.
However, whether I feel 50 or half that, it’s still a milestone, so I thought I’d do a little soul searching, a little assessment, to figure out how I’ve been doing so far. What did I dream of doing when I was a kid? Did I achieve any of my goals? Or should I be downright ashamed of myself for squandering these fifty years (so far)?
(Psst…I did have a drink. Quite a few of them, in fact, over the years.)
So let’s check on Jayne’s Life So Far… Read the rest of this entry
It’s #ChickLitMay! Otherwise known as Chick Lit Chat’s celebration of International Chick Lit Month! Today we’re teasing our chick lit/romantic comedies by talking about what’s on page 45. And you can enter to win some yummy caramels! Keep reading! Read the rest of this entry
I’ve been tagged by the wonderful author Tracy Krimmer to participate in the Very Inspiring Blogger Award/Tour! That means I get to share seven interesting things you might not know about me. At least, I hope they’re interesting.
But, you know, while authors put all sorts of exciting adventures in their books, in reality they’re sitting around in their pajamas with their hair sticking up in all directions, drinking coffee and freaking out about their sales numbers and whether anybody’s going to notice how badly spackled-over that most recent gaping plot hole is.
Still, this is my best effort. If these facts are boring as *#&!, give me a verbal smack upside the head in the comments, and I’ll try to come up with truly intriguing bits of information, okay? Okay. Here we go… Read the rest of this entry
This is the thing: Writers? We write. All the time. Even when we’re not writing our novels, we’re yammering in print about our novels, or about life in general, or about whatever strikes our fancy.
And blog hops are catnip to us. We can never resist a good blog hop; we grab on like we’re latching onto the end of the conga line as it passes our table at a boring wedding.
This is the one I’m going to be boogying to shortly: my writing process. Tagged by Lori Schafer (see her post about her writing process today!) Tagging Seth Herman in my blog post on June 23. I…koff…was supposed to tag three people but I can’t find anyone else! If you’re an author and you want in, give me a shout and I’ll add you.
Jayne Denker 