Women Who Travel in Packs

I have this wonderful group of women friends. We get together once a month or more often and have lunch together and talk each others' ears off while we play board and word games, even something as dorky as charades and as old-fashioned as croquet, and we don't give a hoot how silly it sounds or seems.

Through our lives and work, through our individual art and love of life, through graduations, weddings, grandchildren, husband's and our parent's illnesses and more, we have bonded over the past few years. World travelers, old friends, a New Zealander, two artists, a nutritionist and a couple of writers make up our circle.

As I just typed that word 'circle', I remember in a sudden flashback those popular sweater pins worn back in the early 60's, a perfectly plain gold or silver circle pin? Called 'a virgin pin' in some regions and where I grew up. I am thinking we Game Girls need those pins for our group, even though our virginity was part of the dark ages, long ago in our lives, the circle kind of symbolizes what we are to each other.

There is a real sense of freedom inside our friendship. (Women can be the best for each other.) The laughter is contagious and constant. We are smart women, mothers, wives, artists, professionals, lovely, unique, each with our own style--shoes and jewelry always being hot topics--and are truly strong-minded women who are not afraid to say what we think, and never condemn each other for that freedom of opinion. Even without croquet mallets in hand, we are each of us Lewis Carroll's Queen of Hearts.

Once a year we travel somewhere together for a long weekend, usually by train so we can play games all the way there. We do it April because that month fits to each of our lives, and our weekend is called our Enchanted April. There must be something oddly joyous and contagious about us, because en masse in our travels, we have been befriended, helped, adopted and handled by train attendants, drivers, conductors, restaurant managers, waiters, bartenders, cross-dressers (a long story about Portland) and hotel clerks. We have been whisked past ticket lines and crowds, luggage conveyors, and freely given huge conference rooms in which to play hours worth of Five Crowns. Next year is our first cruise together and I am hoping the captain will adopt us and feed us champagne and lobster.

A certain togetherness has stolen its way upon each of us, and now we find we are as necessary to each other as air and light and the laughter we bring together. It's almost funny, as in odd or obsessive, the way we fight like anything to keep from missing a game day, not because of the games, but the communion of women. I think we would finagle, hire sitters, cars and drivers, and ask friends to substitute for any other obligation we might have that day, including surgery...we would even lie to never miss our day.

These ladies came to my hometown signing for this new book on a sunny Sunday in boas or hats or jewels, charming the bookstore, bearing balloons and lattes (this is the Pacific Northwest) and gifts and smiles for me as I read from THE DAYS OF SUMMER. I gave them margaritas afterward.

I have been writing and signing books in some form or another since 1990. I have been displayed in malls, sitting at bookstore endcaps, in the front of supermarkets, at tables of writers for charity events, on a author tour bus, at women's shows, and have even been the KMart Blue Light Special "Welcome KMart shoppers. We have a special today on...romance authors!"

But you know something? Until a couple of weeks ago on that Sunday, I'd never had a signing with such joy in the air. It was a highlight of my writing career, certainly of my signing and reading events, and something I will never forget. Every one of them wanted to be there and hear the words I read and read the story I told.

How do you balance on a life scale, friendship with love and love with friendship? Many people have a mate or partner who they believe is a best friend. Ah, but I am luckier than that. Both my husband and I had our friends and best friends, both together and as couples and separately. Many of the girls I grew up with and are still part of my life, and the men they married became not merely my old friends, but our friends and his friends.

As I think about the relationships in my lifetime, over years, through the years, and even around some of them, I realize how lucky we are not to be alone in this life. And I think I need to write about friendship soon, as well as family and love and life.

This is on my mind now, before the holiday of the 4th and as I get ready to take off next week for book events in Southern California, where I grew up and some of my oldest friendships began and are still strong. I will see some of the women I met when I was in seventh grade and in high school, women who were in my wedding, and my parents' friends, and some family, too, all who are part of who I have become and how I have lived, perhaps, small pieces of the people I create on the pages of the books I write. I'm thinking maybe the Game Girls need their own story, all made up of course.

Have you every wondered how book ideas come to writers? This is how. Our ripe minds and thoughts go somewhere nostalgic or wondering, and the next thing you know, a new book comes to you.

I wonder at life and God and Fate and our universal and individual master plan, about how something precious can be taken away, but then some other kind of gift comes to you when you least expect it, when you think you have conquered life and its downs and tragedies and screw-ups. Right out the blue it comes upon you, around, embracing you, and your life is changed forever. So I don't believe in coincidence, in happenstance or life's contrivances, such lightweight words used by those who are blinded to or afraid to go inside the depth of life and human nature. I believe in destiny and Fate and God and a master plan. I believe that each of us has an individual human geography. I am lucky because the women friends I have are the bedrock of my life map.

Jill Barnett

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

Life Changes: Barbara Walters' Purse

This week on the View they did a small segment on women's purses. I really wished they would have had all of the women, Meredith, Star, Joy and Elisabeth, dump their purses on the table. But Barbara Walters emptied her purse on air and now I understand why she is the pentultimate news maven and role model for so many others. I find her fascinating on the View because she is so open about everything and has this great history of broadcasting and the most fabulous stories.

Inside BW's purse was a Blackberry, something I haven't tried because I think taking the time to enter everything would eat up my days. I wonder if she does it herself. Probably, she seems like a disciplined gal. But she also had a narrow datebook, "I case I don't have the Blackberry," she said. I immediately saw an opening to ask myself, Can Barbara Walters misplace things like the rest of us unorganized sloths? Please God, say it's true. I want to feel universally human and normal in my own idiosyncrises.

She had a thick address book. I need to do that, put together a new address book, but my BIL and SIL keep moving. The S's spill into the R's now. A few years ago, I bought one of those erasable address books but can't figure out where I put it. (This tells you something about my organizational skills. I'm certain it's in a drawer in one of my four desks on two different floors and in two buildings, probably where I shoved the Christmas cards from 2003 I set aside to look up the right addresses and zipcodes. )

BW is known for her letter and note writing. There is a lovingly old fashioned kind of courtesy to writing notes and letters and thank yous. I love that. For so many years I answered every fan letter with a handwritten note. I would sit outside on the patio on Sundays and write them all. Somehow the mail became overwhelming after I lost Chris and along the way I have stopped due to time pressures and poor organization. I must go back, I think. It feels good to write a note. I love the feel of ink against paper. (One of the many reasons I write my books longhand.)

Back to Barbara Walters' purse... There was a package of Kleenix, a few more items, all very practical and minimal. Then here comes the clincher. She had those great little colored mesh zippered bags, the kind for lipstick or bobby pins and hair elastics, etc. She put her money in one. It was red or coral-colored, and she had another lilac one that held her credit cards. No wallet. She said she got the idea from Hillary Clinton, who used them to separate items in her handbag so she could easily find everything. The woman should be President for that tidbit alone.

Why could I not have thought of that? I'm forever rummaging through my purse to find what has sunk into some unreachable place in the bottom of my bag. I know I could use one for receipts. I use a Ziplock bag when I travel, but I like the idea of color co-ordinated pouches rather than plastic kitchen bags. Since most of my purses are black or lined in black, the color packets would be easy to find.

Digression (I *am* a storyteller):

I was at the airport recently on my way to speak in Denver. At the gate I looked in my big black purse (about 18 by 13 inch drawstring) and my cell phone wasn't in the bag. This wonderful huge purse has one of those nifty cell holder compartments, but I realized I must have left the phone in the cupholder in my car, parked in a lot off of the airport.

Now understand I almost never use my cell except when I travel. Drives my friends nuts that I don't carry it everywhere. It's always in my car, so no one can reach me unless I'm driving and I never remember to take it inside with me to stores or anywhere. I just leave it in the car. Sad, huh?

When I got to the Denver hotel, I called my daughter to let her know where I was, told her I had stupidly left my cell phone in Washington. After I left that message I decided to check my cell phone messages and used the hotel phone to call my cell voicemail. Well, coming from the corner of the hotel room, I hear the can-can music from the Moulin Rouge. Yes. My cell phone was in that black hole of a purse. Now what good is a cell phone compartment if the phone falls out?

Back to BW's purse versus JB's purse.

Why do I carry such a huge bag? It all started with motherhood. I carried a diaper bag for about a month, then forced by my Californian's need for style, I dumped the diaper bag and went to a huge purse. Powder blue and yellow dancing ducks and elephants on a shiny plastic diaper bag was just too much cuteness for me.

Mothers understand the need for a huge purse to fill with Fun Fruits, juice boxes, crackers, Baby Tylenol, whole 250 count boxes of Kleenix, baby wipes, which I still carry in my car. My husband would put his Daytimer and sunglasses in my purse. For the family, my purse had become daily luggage.

The View TV segment prompted me to dump out my purse that day. I wish I'd taken a photo of the contents. There were three different colors of napkins, wadded up Kleenix, not used, just frayed from the wreckage inside my bag. Three loose checkbook pads, all partially used. (So much for the order of check numbers.)

My lime green wallet, bulging and beginning to split at the corner. I have some ten or so market rainchecks in the wallet I keep forgetting to use. I have managed to ruin three wallets through overstuffing. If one more retailer gives me their membership card I'm going scream. (I care about giving job training to women in the world, here and especially in Africa. I don't care how many Hallmark cards I buy.)

Back inside my purse: My little digital camera. I love my camera. One hard red leather sunglass case, bandaids, ferry schedules, pink marker pen, probably $2.00 in change, a 4oz water bottle, three gold foil chocolate hearts from a Valentine luncheon, two decks of Bicycle cards, one red, one blue. (This is in case I run into ten friends and need to play Texas rummy on the ferry.)

There were probably thirty various receipts mucking up the bag: grocery, ferry, gas and bank. More pens, red, black and green. My flashdrive with my current ms, synopses. This drive needs updating because I think the final draft of THE DAYS OF SUMMER is still on it, too. One small ring notebook for making brilliant ideas, book notes or capturing lines of dialogue that pop into my head. One bottle of Excedrin & one bottle of Motrin, both with the caps lost and a good 50 plus white and orange pills lining the bottom of my purse.

Explain something to me. Why will a childproof cap refuse to open when you have a headache? You can line up the Vee's, you can press down, you can squeeze and you can stomp on it, and it will not open. Children, you *are* safe. I've been known to stand in the kitchen and take a meat tenderizing mallet to one small plastic bottle cap just to get it off.

Yet when you put one of those same kind of bottles in your purse, it opens constantly. Now, whenever I my knee hurts or I have a headache, I don't even bother to look for the pills bottle. I stick my hand to the bottom and scour my pursebed. Children, stay out of my purse!

In one zippered pocket were two pairs of Costco reading glasses, seven pens, half a roll of butterscotch Life Savers, Listerine mints, one Lancome lip gloss, one L Mercier lip pencil, one Chanel lipstick pencil, one Chanel Tornado lipstick and Chapstick. (I use all of the lip products to get the right lip color.)

Toward the corner was the squashed but still wrapped oatmeal raisin breakfast bar from the plane three weeks ago. A mail box key, Altoids, open and spilled all over the bottom of the purse so it smells like cinnamon. I'll bet Altoids never thought they were making purse freshener.

My business cards all nice and tidy in a little drawstring bag my friend gave me when she made the cards. Does she know me or what?

There was a dental app't card, a doctor's receipt, and oil change receipt, a movie stub, half a bag of Good 'n Plenty and an old Red Vine. I am horrified. Barbara Walters would never have an old Red Vine in her handbag.

I'm now searching for small, mesh, Hillary Clinton zippered bags in different colors. Please note in this entire blog list of 'Jill's purse contents,' there was not one organizer, Daytimer, Palm Pilot or calendar. That speaks volumes about my purse, my car, my desk drawers, & my life.

So I want to make my life like Barbara Walters' purse. I vow today I will start with my own handbag.

Jill Barnett, Writer and Disorganized Nightmare