Tote Bags 'n' Blogs: Heir Today Gone Tomorrow

Showing posts with label Heir Today Gone Tomorrow. Show all posts

Sunday, July 19, 2015

You Name It I Write It by Jenny Gardiner

I am definitely a crazy mixed-up kid when it comes to what I write. Perhaps it's because I started out as a writer, which isn't always the case with authors. I studied journalism and minored in broadcast news, worked in newspaper, radio and TV, and then as a publicist.

So even before I started writing books, I was all over the place. And even now, I'm always writing and pitching stories for newspapers, magazines, radio programming, and online sites. Sort of Whack-A-Mole publishing, that's me. In some ways that has held me in good stead, but in others it sort of feeds a kind of ADD writing, where focusing on one thing, versus covering all bases and then some, might be a good idea.

For years I would just write the book I wanted to write at the time I wanted to write it. Which led me to writing a novel that was a cross between humorous women's fiction and chick lit. Then a novel that was women's fiction. Then a memoir. Then came some rom/com, one ill-conceived dabble in very steamy romance that came about as a result of a writing challenge. Next I put together a collection of essays, contributed to an anthology about dogs, then some more women's fiction, even 2/3 of a vampire novel (written as a joke), I have a brilliant mystery series, and well, it goes on from there. My last full-length novel that I wrote but didn't publish is serious commercial women's fiction (although it is dead to the world right now, perhaps to be resurrected some day if I get the energy to figure out how to fix it).

Years ago I was at a conference talking with my friend Marie Force. This was before the onset of digital publishing, just on the cusp of it. We were both with some publishing houses, me with my foray of all-over-the-place writing, and her with her romance novels, with which she was wisely building up a group of readers who eagerly awaited her next novel. Both of us were quite frustrated with the publishing climate as it existed back then.

"Did you ever think that maybe you should concentrate on one genre?" Marie asked me.

Huh. I hadn't really considered that, to be honest. I sort of proudly wore that "write what I want to write when I want to write it" badge, hoping for the best.

Fast forward a good handful of years. Both of us got into digital publishing in the early days, me with some terrific early success, though a subsequent hiatus from publishing was a really bad plan, but that is what it is. And Marie has sold tens of millions of romance novels and now runs a publishing empire.

And finally I decided I did indeed need focus on one thing and go from there. Which is why now I've been writing and publishing a rom/com series called It's Reigning Men. And I've got an eye to my next series that I can't wait to start writing (although I'm still having a lot of fun with this one so not sure when I can get around to that).

The fact is, Marie was right: I needed to stick with the program and find an audience who would come along with my books. Which is how I started writing my current series. The great upside is that I've had a lot of fun delving into world-building and jet-setting my characters all over the world.

Now I need to to get rid of the myriad distractions that are keeping me from finishing book four in this series and I'll be good to go!

PS today is the last day that SOMETHING IN THE HEIR is on sale everywhere! Only 99 cents through today!

Subscribe to my newsletter

find me on Facebook

find me on Twitter

my website

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Amateur Night at the Grocery Store! by Jenny Gardiner

My patience runs thin when the depletion of my food pantry accidentally coincides with the impending death-threat of a light dusting of snow, which sends people into paroxysms of fear that they will be housebound and famine-stricken if they can’t access a loaf of bread and a half-gallon of milk for a day or two.

This happened a few weeks ago when a fleeting snow squall was in the forecast. We swung into the grocery store before the movies to quickly grab some fruit and cold cuts, oblivious to the forecast of a dangerous imminent storm (which left one thirty-second of an inch of snow on the ground, while we were inside the grocery store; go figure), and were met with the nightmarish shopping frenzy of desperate food hoarders.

I leaned over to my husband and muttered in dismay, “Amateur night at the grocery store.”

He laughed.

Some people love to grocery shop. I was one of them, back in, oh, 1975, when my mother wisely capitalized on my ’tween-aged naïveté and dropped me off at a succession of grocery stores in order to do her food-procurement bidding. For years, while my mother earned graduate degrees and focused on homework and classes, I was the workhorse of my family’s food supply needs. I actually enjoyed making lists, collecting coupons, and manning my overflowing shopping cart.

Each week, Mom dropped me off first at the grocery store, then the produce store, then the butcher shop to acquire the food needs of a busy family of six. In my later teen years, as I drove myself to grocery stores, I even picked up a hot guy! Make that, I engaged in a casual flirtation with a very good-looking butcher, who I eventually dated briefly, until his Greek parents got wind of it and put an end to his seeing a non-Greek girl.

Those were the days of triple coupons. And for fun—for fun!—I clipped coupons, because it thrilled me that I could earn triple the value for them. Nowadays, burned out, I opt instead to spare myself the hassle and lose out on the money and not be bothered, shame on me.

Years ago my sister-in-law joined a coupon club. She had a frighteningly massive assemblage of ravaged coupons, piled high in a box that got passed amongst her club cohorts. I never understood the idea of purchasing excessive supplies for which your house has no storage, just to save a few cents. Back then, any time she invited us over, she fed us freezer-burned ice cream, because her deep freeze was jam-packed with gallons of stale Bryers she’d gotten on discount. Hardly worth the savings when the food becomes inedible.

As we shopped during the seven-minute snow squall a few weeks ago, after navigating clogged aisles filled with shoppers and carts while trying to grab the few items we sought, we arrived to find a check-out that was easily eight people-deep in each lane.

Anyone who’s been grocery shopping for forty-odd years can tell you that choosing the grocery lane in the we’re-all-gonna-die pre-storm frenzy is a fine art. You could eenie-meenie-miney-moe it, but that’s for newbies. It’s best to apply critical thinking skills, which I unfortunately failed to employ that night. At first I attempted the savvy shopper plan: me in one lane, my husband in another, and whoever gets there first you jump over with the spouse.

But he’s all about fairness and even-stevenness, so didn’t want to play that game, insisting we stick to one lane. Yawn….Which is what I ended up doing, because I chose totally wrong in my forced-haste decision. Not only did I pick the lane with no bag-packer helping out—critical for dire shopping times—but I ended up in the mucho-painful “Hi! I’m new but I’m learning” aisle, even worse.

This means a cashier who doesn’t know produce codes and thus takes quintuple the amount of time to ring through items, with the man in front of us having a cart overflowing with, yes, you guessed it: produce. All with the clock ticking on the movie we needed to get to. An unforgiveable grocery shopping rookie mistake for which we paid by missing the movie previews and getting lousy seats. When you’ve been shopping since the Carter Administration, you should know better. Clearly I foolishly yielded to his non-grocery shopping ignorance at a critical time. Never again.

I’m still scarred from being stuck in a legitimate snowstorm frenzy at grocery store, after back-to-back-to-back blizzards when my kids were under the age of four. I stressed in line for two hours as my three children attempted ENT-threatening gymnastics on every facet of my cart, filled with what meager unwanted groceries remained in the store (no doubt repulsive Vienna sausages and pickled eggs in a jar amongst them).

Nowadays to gain control over my shopping experience, I always do the self check-out. And bag my own food. And just to add some spice to the mundanity of grocery shopping, I opt to check out in Spanish. Nothing like multi-tasking and learning grocery store Spanish while doing the chore that bores me to tears. The clerks always think I’m a ninny who accidentally got stuck in Spanish mode, and come running to save me. Which can be necessary, if you have no idea what celery or asparagus is called in Spanish. But when I tell them I did so voluntarily, they look at me like I’m nuts, shrug, and walk away.

Actually I do “get” this primal need to feed, just in case. Something about being potentially snowbound makes me want to cook all sorts of things I certainly don’t need to ingest. And reinforces some survival-of-the-species demand to provide, to be warm, to gather ’round and enjoy Mother Nature-induced chillin’. And chillin’, I’m all in favor of. Especially if it’s not while cooling my heels in line at the grocery store.

Next time you’ll find Jenny Gardiner buying groceries online. Or at www.jennygardiner.net

In the meantime, great news! Book 2 of my IT'S REIGNING MEN series, HEIR TODAY GONE TOMORROW will be released in the next week or two--please keep an eye out for it.

Also if you sign up for my newsletter here you get a free copy of my novel WHERE THE HEART IS!

Book one is available: SOMETHING IN THE HEIR.