Radio Show | Author, Jennifer Chase and “Dead Games”
Jennifer Chase, author of the thriller, “Compulsion,” returns to discuss her second, and recent novel, “Dead Games“. Tune in.
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novel
Perfectionism, Fears and Good Husbands…
Readying your book for publication, i.e. the printing and binding of the words you have penned is an illuminating process.
First of all, if you’re like me, a perfectionist, nothing you read of the novel or story seems right.
All the sentences you spent hours upon hours crafting, shaping, editing, refining and then re-writing sound horrible. I read my stories and novels aloud during the last stages of editing.
Perhaps the words sound awkward because I don’t want to believe that I’ve reached this point. And under my own steam.
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Last Edits, My Personal Best, and Being Present…
The past two weeks have been a blur.
I’m in the last stages of editing my novel, The House, that is due out later this year, and times have been quite interesting.
It’s funny what happens when you reach a point of having to let go of a book and “put it out there” so to speak.
For me it’s a scary time.
And particularly so, since I’m self-publishing. My first work, Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident” a collection of short stories, was brought to print by a traditional publishing house.
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Of Intermediate Regions, Hunger and Thirst…
There stands an intermediate region in the life and structure of a novel, that place between crossing the border of the opening and beginning and entering into a series of actions that lead to the penultimate center of the journey.
It lies between the edge of that vast new world of survival that constitutes the protagonist’s path of growth and transformation, the steps she or he makes towards achieving their goal. It is a land filled obstacles of varied sorts, and the ultimate crisis that manifests profound change.
This area operates much like the night before that big game, the minutes ticking up to giving one’s debut concert. For writers this can function much like reading one’s novel for those last times wherein we institute final edits towards bringing the work to its brightest hue
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Dear John, A Daughter’s Wish and Moments of Awakening…
My daughter recently stated that she hopes that my husband and I live to a ripe old age and that we die together, much like Noah and Allie in the movie based on The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks. My daughter had just finished reading Spark’s novel, now a movie, Dear John.
That’s the great thing about reading books. They awaken us to parts of ourselves, hopes dreams and wishes, and those held for us by loved ones.
That my daughter, not yet 25, could offer me such a gift I find astounding. Most children, and rightfully so, want their parents alive for as long as possible.
Saying this to my daughter, she responded with, “I can handle my life, take care of myself as long as I know that you and Daddy are together somewhere in the universe, even if I’m not with you.”
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Of Clarity and Understanding, Guide and Map, Epiphany and Plot…
Reaching that point where the protagonist has made the change, we, as writers feel differently.
We see the world of our novel from another level.
Ideally we come to hold those dimensions of personality regarding our central character(s) come in greater clarity and understanding.
And yet this is also a place where we can get to know ourselves better as individuals, not simply as persons who write.
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Faith, Our Personal Best and the Work We Do…
But I want to stay with mothers, because so often when we write we, and the world, does not take seriously what we do seriously, particularly if we choose to operate primarily as a mother, and a writer second.
Those of us who choose to place our writing second do so because I think on some level we know that we will never reach our personal best at crafting stories until we have nurtured our children to an adequate point in their and our lives.
This is not the only way to come to writing. This is our way.
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