Meeting with Book Club in Gilbert AZ

A couple of weeks ago I went to the ANWA Writers Conference in Mesa, AZ. My sis-in-law organized her book club to meet while I was in town. Members of her book club read at least one of the books from The Newport Ladies Book Club series.

The women took turns talking about one of the characters/books, and it was really interesting to hear what they had to say about each of the characters.We agreed that Daisy, Paige, Olivia and Athena felt like out friend.

I was able to share the news that we'd just plotted the REUNION book a few days before, and I was in the process of writing the first couple of chapters (before handing it off to the next co-author).

My sis-in-law served pumpkin pie and homemade hot chocolate after :-)

Some pics from the evening.

Recent reads from the Gilbert book club include Edenbrook by Julianne Donaldson and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I've actually read both books and enjoyed them both.

What's Coming Next

With Athena, the last of the four 2012 books in the series, being released in November, we have many readers asking, "what's next?" We've been asked about whether or not there will be second installments of the four books or if we'll write about the other women in the group. The answer is yes and yes.

We have all completed our second 'set' of books in the series:

Ruby by Heather Moore (Romance)
Shannon by Josi S. Kilpack (Women's Fiction)
Ilana by Annette Lyon (Women's Fiction)
Victoria by Julie Wright (Romance)

They are all in the hands of our editors and timetables are being decided, covers coordinated, and semi-colons fixed (except for Annette's cause she knows her punctuation.) Shannon is expected for release in May, but we're unsure if one of the other books will beat it to press. Each of our careers are continuing forward and moving us in new directions that didn't allow us the same time together that we enjoyed so much the first time around, but we still very much enjoyed taking the journey with these new women as

These four books will be the final 'set' in the series, but we're not quite done yet. Because most of the books do not end with a tidy little bow in top, we will be working on a Reunion Book, where all eight women will get a few chapters each to give readers an update on what's happened since we last left them. We are very excited to put this volume together and hope that it will come out shortly after book 8. Stay tuned for more details. We'll have book information, release dates, first chapters, and covers posted here as soon as we get that information.

Thanks for all the great feedback we've had on the books--we sure do appreciate the support. It's been a labor of love and brought each of us so much enjoyment. Knowing it does the same for readers is frosting on the cake.

Interview with Deseret News, with reporter Hikari Loftus

In December, we had a great meeting with Deseret News reporter, Hikari Loftus. She was fascinated by the idea of a parallel-series written by four authors. We met at Mini's Cupcakes in Salt Lake City, which is incidentally a Cupcake Wars finalist.

Eating a few too many cupcakes, we had a great time recalling all that went into the series. As I listened to everyone chat, I marveled at how we pulled it all over. It was a three-year journey from idea to when the first 4 books in the series was completed and released.

We met on a December day in 2009 at Amber's Restaurant in Spanish Fork. That was the beginning of our brainstorming session:

Today, Hikari's article was released. I loved what she said here: "It is easy to make assumptions when you don't know the full story."

This is referring to meeting someone new and making an assumption about their lives or personalities. Once you get to know that person, you almost always change your first impression and your understanding and compassion for the person expands. This is a central theme of The Newport Ladies Book Club series. Compassion, friendship, and understanding.

For the full article in the Deseret News, go HERE.

Thanks, Hikari!

We Just Don't Know

by Annette Lyon

I imagine that I'm like many writers in that often a certain theme will latch on to my psyche and find its way into my writing in different ways.

For me, the current theme my brain apparently loves looking at from different angles is that of judging others, and how no matter how much we think we know another person, including who they are and what they're going through, we really don't. Even when we have a lot of information. We just don't know.

I explored that theme extensively in my novel Band of Sisters, and it was something that came up again and again from readers who appreciated the book. (It went on to win a Whitney Award in its category; I think the idea hit a nerve for many people, in a good way.)

Going into the Newport Ladies series, I didn't realize how much the same concept would become a dominating element of not only my book, Paige, but of all the books.

For that matter, at its core, these books are about seeing the world, and often the very same situation, from a different point of view. I remember one reader saying that after reading Olivia, they felt that Paige was rather spineless and mousy. Until they read Daisy, and saw more scenes with her and realized that there was more to Paige than Olivia saw. That reader looked forward to the release of Paige so they could see the story from her perspective.

Fans of the books seem to frequently come back to the same thing. They appreciate the rare opportunity to see into someone else's head to understand what is really going on in there.

As time has gone on, I've wondered why this theme has resonated so much with me personally. After some time of pondering, I realized that, like so many of us, I've been misjudged at times in my life, and have wished I could explain, that I could crack open my brain so someone else could see what I see, feel what I feel, think what I think.

Part of my problem (and I'm aware it's mine, not something I can blame on anyone else) is that I'm horribly shy, but not in the classic way. If I'm in a room with even one good friend, I can be chatty and comfortable and look like I'm totally in my element. Just don't ask me to interact with the other 50 strangers in the room, and I won't have an anxiety attack.

I've realized that in some situations, people have viewed my behavior as stuck-up (their word, not mine), because, as far as they can see, I'm deliberately leaving others out of the conversation, that I'm "too good" for them.

The reality: I am paralyzed by shyness to the point that I have a painful time opening my mouth around people I don't know. The one exception is when I'm teaching a workshop. Somehow lecturing a room of people is different than engaging on an individual level. It's a different kind of scary. Instead of thinking I'm somehow better than others, I almost always see myself as not good enough, that I'm lucky to be allowed into the group of friends I have or other circles I'm in, and that at any moment, I could get kicked right out.

An example: My senior year of high school, I was walking across the commons with a friend I'd been on the drill team with for three years. Her mother was with us, and she said something like this: "I'm so glad we've gotten to know you over the years. You've been such a good friend to my daughter. You're just great. Good thing we had a chance to get to know you, though, because when I first met you, I thought you were totally stuck up."

I was 18, stunned, and ready to burst into tears. I had no idea why she'd thought those things about me (although I have my suspicions now--it was the shy thing), but to this day, I'm still stumped as to why she'd tell a teenager such a thing. I was devastated.

More than two decades later, I can look back and see her words as a blessing of sorts. This wasn't the first or the last time someone said something similar to me, but it was enough of a pattern for me to finally see that people viewed me a specific way even though it wasn't remotely close to reality.

Understanding how others have viewed me, and how they may view me in the future, has helped me in a couple of ways, but the most important is to recognize exactly what the Newport Ladies books have hammered home to me so well: That I shouldn't judge others, because chances are, I have no clue what's really going on in their heads and hearts.

For all I know, they could be inwardly shy, like me, and show it differently than I do.

In short, I'm reminded to give others the benefit of the doubt. I'm not perfect at it, but I'm learning. I hope that in some small way, our readers may look on other women, whether in their family, their neighborhood, or their community--and view them with a softer lens too.

I know doing so has been a great thing for me. Seeing people and the world from new perspectives is a wonderful gift fiction writers receive in spades.

New Challenges: First Person

by Annette

For the non-writers out there, one of the big decisions novelists have to make before beginning a work is what point of view the story will be told in. The most common points of view in modern fiction are first person and close third person.

Third person is when scenes are told as "he said" and "she did' and so forth. Close (or tight) third person is what modern readers are most accustomed to reading, when individual scenes get into the head of one character at a time. Some books have multiple point-of-view (POV) characters, such as a romance where the scenes switch between the hero's POV and the heroine's POV.

A great example of tight third is the Harry Potter series, which is told almost exclusively from Harry's POV. We get a few scenes here and there (usually at the beginning of books) from other points of view (the prime minister, of Voldemort himself), but most of it is Harry's.

What we don't see in those books is first person.

First person is when the character is narrating the book as if it happened them personally. "I went to the store," and "I fell down." A popular series written in first person is The Hunger Games trilogy.

An odd quirk exists with first person: For several reasons, which I won't get into here due to space, first person tends to be one of the hardest POVs to do well.

Ironically, first person tends to be the POV of choice for beginning writers, because it seems like it'll be easy.

I have to raise my hand here as one of the newbies who thought first person would be easy. One of my early manuscripts was first person, and I loved the immediacy it brought to the story. But there were pitfalls, many of them, and eventually, I realized that the story would be served better by third person. I rewrote the whole thing (which, by the way, is almost as time-intensive as writing a whole new book), and it was eventually published.

That book was originally drafted close to fifteen years ago. After rewriting the whole thing, I pretty much swore off first person, knowing that (1) it lacked certain tools I liked to use as a writers and (2) I didn't have the chops to pull it off.

Enter The Newport Ladies Book Club. 

I don't remember how the point of view discussion happened, but we agreed that each book would be in first person, from the title character's perspective.

Whoever had the idea first was right on the money: To show just how differently women see the world, and even the same situation, the books really did need first person.

So, after over a decade of swearing off the POV, I was faced with writing a book in first person. Yikes.

Turns out that writing and publishing a whole bunch of books and editing professionally for years helps hone a writer's skills. I'd learned a lot about the craft, and I didn't fall into the same pitfalls I had before.

For that matter, first person was fun while writing Paige. One of the best parts is that I didn't have to worry about how another character came across, which tends to be an issue with first person. The other characters had their own books to tell their stories! No, I had to worry about one character, and one character only: Paige.

Somehow I found myself diving into her mind and understanding her in a way I never expected. Early in the drafting process, I found myself slipping into third person here and there, but eventually, first person came naturally. The story flowed. I laughed with Paige. I cried with her. And when the end came, I was right there with her.

The only part that took a lot of work after that was the opening chapter, which I must have rewritten close to a dozen times before I felt it worked. But that's not a point-of-view issue. That's a me issue. Openings are my Achilles' Heel.

I had so much fun writing in first person, that my next work-in-progress adopted that POV without me giving it much thought. Then I wrote Ilana, also in first person, and also a great learning experience.

Alas, that other manuscript has fallen into the same pit at my initial first-person attempt: I've decided that it needs to be third person after all. I'm in the trenches of revision with it right now. While I'm sure I'll reach moments of wanting to bang my head against a wall in frustration, I know the end result will be worth it, and for now, as I write new scenes from a different POV (one that didn't exist originally), I'm having a ball, knowing that the story is coming to life in a way it hadn't before.

I don't know what points of view my writing future will hold, but for some reason, The Newport Ladies Book Club is where my first person efforts just work, and my other writing, at least, so far, does better in third.

Just one more example of how this whole project has taken on a life and certain magic of its own.

Book Club Highlight: The GG's Book Club

by Heather Moore

Last week, I was invited to speak to a book club that was holding a retreat in beautiful Deer Valley, Utah. Book Club member, Mary Margaret, wanted to surprise the group of ladies with a guest author appearance. She also asked me to bring a couple of my books. Of course I brought ATHENA, knowing it would fit right in with a book club (wink, wink).

Once a year, the GG Book Club (The Giller Girls) travel to a destination for a weekend retreat. Their group was started in 2001 with six women in Ontario, Canada, and they continue to meet once a month to discuss books. The monthly meetings developed into close personal friendships, sharing recipes, reading great books, and eventually putting together their first retreat.

In fact, three of the women wrote a book about this incredible club that includes book club recipes, summary and ratings of books read, and their amazing adventures.

Now authors, Perry Jongsma, Pat Maaten, and Kathleen Mundy, are doing book signings and booking speaking engagements about their book club and book.

These ladies even put together a beautiful website for their book Reading Between the Wines: The Story of a Traveling Book Club: www.readingbetweenthewines.ca

The GG's Book Club uses the element of surprise in their meetings The hostess chooses the book in advance, and the ladies arrive not knowing which book they'll be presented with, or even in which manner it will be introduced--which has become quite a creative event.

They live by the GG's Book Club 10 Commandments:
1. You are priority #1. This is your night.
2. Fun is a must.
3. LOL (laugh out loud) at each other and yourself.
4. Digression is accepted and expected.
5. Never refuse a compliment or be reluctant to offer one.
6. What happens at GG Book Club stays at Book Club.
7. Read between the wines.
8. Where the boys aren't and never will be!
9. Never apologize for your book selection.
10. Completing the book is expected but not mandatory.

Favorite Book Club reads include:

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

When I asked them what the secret to running a book club for over ten years, they said it was willingness to try new books, commitment to the club, and being able to accept each others' differences.

During our discussion, the energy and the friendship between the women was tangible. And it reminded me of why my co-authors and I decided to write The Newport Ladies Book Club series in the first place. Not only because we were friends and had enjoyed enriched lives because of it, but because we wanted to write about one of the greatest blessings in our lives. Then transfer that to characters in a book club who are brought together for a single common purpose in the love of reading, but walk away with so much more.

From my First Book Group to Newport Ladie's Book Club

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By Josi S. Kilpack

I joined my first book group when I was about 23 years old. I lived in a ‘starter’ neighborhood in Draper where there were a lot of young moms like me who wanted things to do, were making some of our first adult friendships, and had energy I stand in awe of now that I’m pushing forty and try to be in bed by 9:30. There were twelve of us in the group and we met once a month, taking turns choosing the book we would read and discuss. There were always refreshments.

I had been a voracious reader for many years before I joined this group, but I tended to read rather narrowly; when I read Regency Romance I ONLY read Regency Romance. When I read biographies, I spent months just reading biographies. I didn’t follow Oprah’s book club or read reviews, instead I would read everything by a particular author, or other books in that specific genre. I had never been involved in book discussions until being a part of this group, and it was fascinating to hear what other people saw that I’d missed, or share a point I noted that no one else had seen. I read my first (and to date, only) Jane Austin novel because of that group. Most of the books we read were outside of my ‘sphere’ and it helped me realize just how much is out there.  

A year or so into our meetings, I had to take a break from the group when I was put on bed rest for a pregnancy. It was a difficult time and, honestly, missing book group was the least of my worries. I read a lot of books during this time and eventually started writing what would become my first published novel, Earning Eternity. I didn’t set out to write a novel; I though I had an idea for an interesting short story, but it grew and grew and grew and by the time my son was six weeks old, I had written a 300 page novel I had no idea what to do with. I told one friend about this book I’d written; she told someone else, who told someone else and at the March 1999 book group meeting someone asked me about it. Once I admitted what I had done (like it’s a bad thing, right?) they asked to read it for the next month’s book club. My sister helped me print up 12 copies of the book that I then handed out to these women. They became the first people to ever give me feedback. They also encouraged me to get this book published. They changed my life.

Fifteen years later, I get to be a part of a project that writes about members a book group. Funny how full those circles can be sometimes.