News of My Death....

THE DAYS OF SUMMER is my first book in four years. Four years! My first thought when someone asks where I've been is the old Mark Twain quip, 'the news of my death as been greatly exaggerated.' But that wouldn't be honest. In a way, part of me was dead.

One morning I said goodbye to my husband and took our daughter to school. That night a policeman stood at my door to tell me Chris was dead. Once the horrific shock wore off (if it really has, even now, 10 years later), I was so scared I cannot even today put into words the kind of fear that engulfed me. Me, a writer, at a loss for words? Jill Barnett, writer of deep emotions, unable to describe one? Yes. I cannot. The truth is: I lost so much that day.

I had lived more of my life with Chris than without him. Our daughter was so young and she adored her dad. I never thought I would have to raise her alone and that scared me more than anything. So I powered forward on determination driven by fear and on sheer woman-power, sheer mother-power.

For the next few years every decision I made was made for her and for us. I was suddenly sole support, yet had been lucky in my career. I had for a long time been writing funny, poignant love stories set in times long ago. There was a fairy tale quality to those books and enough humanness to give me a level of success.

But writing them after losing Chris almost killed me. My editor wanted to pull the book but I said no. (I was afraid if they pulled it I would never write again.) I had foolishly given one of the characters (something I never do) one of Chris endearing yet annoying traits in the book I was working on when he died. I couldn't write. It almost killed me to finish that book and I did so by the skin of my teeth. I turned the book in June 17th and it was on the shelves, thanks to my publisher, the first week of August. The book was CARRIED AWAY, a dual love story plotline with two brothers who are like the Odd Couple, very Oscar and Felix, and the two women they meet who are social enemies.

I went on to wrote more historical romance novels, even did another contract for more. But I struggled. I called a good writer friend one day and asked her," How can I wrote these joy-filled, fairy tale love stories when there is no joy in my heart? She, like I, had no answers.

Then because I guess life needed to test me, for the next few years, I lost everyone but my daughter and two sisters. I discovered just how strong a woman needs to be. Me? I still cannot believe it. It's almost like everything happened to someone else, as if I am writing a character in the Jill Barnett story.

But eventually God or Fate took over one aspect of my life and became my writing savior. The publisher decided to bring my work out in a hardcover format and asked if I wanted to write what I had been writing or something else. I knew I had to write something else.

So I wrote SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY, a WWII novel with six main characters, a larger more epic setting and storyline, and bigger love stories. I wanted to dive into characters' lives under the most difficult conditions, and give the reader the experience of living with these characters in real life situations.

Writing is never easy. The switch took time and much thought. I always tell people when asked that it is more difficult to 'think a book' than to physically write it. Then I began another book and 911 hit and I set that book aside for content and timing reasons, and because I knew there was a certain kind of story I wanted to write, a special kind of Jill Barnett book. I began THE DAYS OF SUMMER.

My daughter went off to college, an adult on her own, and within a week I was hit with the most devasting delayed reaction to Chris's death. Now I can look back and see that with her grown I could finally let go. (Oh, that we could only live our lives backwards. I put a quote about that in the new book.)

The wall I had built around my emotions crumbled. My grief woke me in the morning and went to bed with me at night. I couldn't think. I couldn't write. I functioned, but not behind closed doors. I hid what I was going through from everyone.

But a couple of good friends knew me and each separately dragged me out of my grief (me pretty much kicking and screaming) and back into the world. They made me see I wasn't broken, just part of my life was.

I owe them so much. Women need other women. Women can be the most help to each other or sometimes the cruelest to each other. I'm lucky to have friends who care about me. One of them is a talented writer who made me see my process of writing was not working and hadn't been for years, and so I found a new process of writing and with it, my way back to my absolute love of writing books.

I write longhand now, on Clairefontaine pads and with Uniball Elite pens ( we writers are a bit like Jack Nicholson's character in As Good As It Gets, who is a bit OCD) and you will find me writing anywhere: downtown in front of a coffee shop, by a pond, on a ferry, in a garden, on a beach, in bed and on my deck.

Longhand has given me complete freedom. I can write anywhere, and now I can write anything, especially the stories I need to tell, about characters like me, like other women, whose lives become broken and they must find the grace to rise above tragedy and despair and trouble, people who search for peace and love and happiness, and often, must find forgiveness.

My books are about honest life issues, the problems all women face in their lifetimes and with their families and lovers. But the books are also about hope and about living with our wrong choices and mistakes and rising above them. Like all writers my books are about human nature, but the books I write now are also about inhuman nature.

I'll talk about the book itself in a future blog. For now, with the book out barely two weeks or so, I wanted to write honestly about me the author instead, to give you a little insight to the new stories I need to tell and why.

I'm always asked about my book ideas, all writers are asked this. I have so many stories in my head. They come to me like snowflakes, drifting down from a place I haven't been, each one so different and special and something I know I can only do once. I just want to live long enough to tell all those stories.

I wish for you a long life of good friends who are there when you are most alone. I wish for you happiness and peace.

Jill Barnett