May Book Club

Today being the first Wednesday of the month, was book club day.  It's a group of female readers that gather once a month at a local Round Table Pizza for lunch and the chance to meet two local authors. 

Today the two authors visiting with us were Elizabeth Boyle and Jane Porter.   Both of these authors live in the Seattle area, so traveled down together to be with us today.

Jane was telling us one of the books she has written, "Flirting with Forty" is being made into a Lifetime Movie and will be on TV this coming fall.  The movie stars Heather Locklear and Jane recently returned from Hawaii where she met with the producer, screen writer & the cast.  This story is based loosely on her own life, depicting her divorce that happened when she was turning 40.  Of course the story and the movie will be slightly different...as the screen writer took the liberty of changing things here and there. Some of Jane's other books are "Odd Mom Out" and "Mrs Perfect."  Jane taught 7th grade History for many years but now concentrates on her writing and her children.

Elizabeth told the story of her first book.  In 1996 she entered a writers contest.  All the entrants had to submit was the first 3 chapters...of course they were expected to have a completed story available in case they were among the finalists.  Well, she submitted the first 3 chapters...did not have the rest completed and went about her duties as a Microsoft employee.   When the letter came that she been picked as a finalist, she was back east trying to get back home to Seattle.  She'd called her husband to tell him the status of her flights arrival and he mentioned the letter.  He read it to her over the phone, it stated that she had to have the remaining chapters of the book into Dell Publishing in 6 weeks.  Needless to say, she freaked out.  She got home and between work, being a mom, a wife and a homemaker...she worked on the rest of the book every available minute.  The deadline was on a Monday ~the book had to be in New York at Dell Publishing by 8 am.  She called several places to see about getting her manuscript delivered "over night" and the closest she could come was getting it to Sea-Tac airport by 5pm on Saturday to fly out on a Fed Ex  plane.  She was so stressed,  she could see that she wasn't going to make it.....when her husband walked into the room where she was working and said "honey, just calm down. You have until 10pm Sunday night to get this together."  That dear man had called and made a reservation on a red-eye flight, leaving Seattle at 11pm Sunday night getting into New York the next morning.  He had a backpack with a few essentials and her completed manuscript, arriving at Dell Publishing right on time.  Four hours later he was back on a flight to Seattle.  They hadn't shared this with any of their extended family...didn't want to get anyone's hopes up.  But about 5 months later she attended the Writer's Conference where the winner would be announced, eating lunch at a big round table with the other finalists. She said she was so nervous but was cordial to all the other women, knowing that if she didn't win it was important to be nice and friendly and not look like a sore looser.  Well, lo and behold when the announcement came ......she was the winner!  She was so thrilled...she knew that she might really get to realize a dream~that of being a writer. That book was titled "Brazen Angel."  Since then she has written 15 published books and no longer works at Microsoft.

As usual the book table was full of books for exchange and I brought more home ~ yup I did. Before next month, I really need to go thru my books and bag up some to take and put on the table.