BLOGWORDS – Thursday 1 August 2019 – CHAT THURSDAY – AUTHOR INTERVIEW – JENNIFER MAJOR
CHAT THURSDAY – AUTHOR INTERVIEW – JENNIFER MAJOR
“Redeeming History. Restoring mercy.”
“I write about grace, history, justice, and what happens when you put all three together.”
Please join me in giving a feathered welcome to Jennifer Major.
FAST FAVES
Eggs or Pancakes CARBS, BABY!! (rem: YESSS!)
Paperback or Kindle Kindle, I have arthritic hands and books are hard to hold
Thornton or Darcy Darcy
rem: Hullo, Jennifer, and welcome to my little nest. Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
JENNIFER : I was raised in Vancouver, BC, which is the most beautiful city in the world. It’s also the most expensive! We left years ago! Now my husband and I live in a little ‘burb outside Fredericton, New Brunswick.
rem: Oh! Vancouver is gorgeous country! Tell us three random things about yourself no one knows.
JENNIFER : I despise pepper. I never wear polyester shirts. I think red looks ridiculous on redheads.
rem: Ya, I’m not a fan of polyester, either. But I do like red… Do you have a favorite Bible verse? And why is it a favorite?
JENNIFER : Micah 6:8, “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” It lays out how one should live and leaves no room for the “Yeah, but” role of humans trying to add their own spin.
rem: Yes! Yes! Yes! Essentially a concise image of God Himself, and how we are to imitate that. (sounds so easy, doesn’t it?) What is your favourite quotation and why?
JENNIFER : “Don’t sacrifice the permanent on the altar of the immediate.” It teaches us to strive and stay steady when giving up, or in, is so tempting.
rem: I’ve also heard that called “the tyranny of the urgent.” Such a valuable lesson to keep our focus and not be distracted by all.the.noise around us. What’s the most random thing in your bag or on your desk?
JENNIFER : My book of Navajo medicinal plants.
rem: Now, that sounds fascinating. If you could spend an evening with a fictional character, who would it be and why?
JENNIFER : Ohhh, great question!! Anne Shirley would be a fine conversationalist. I’d interrupt her and suggest that she accept her beautiful hair, and go easy on poor Marilla, and keep Matthew close to the house on that fateful day.
rem: Great choice! What do you think is significant about Christian fiction? How has being a novelist impacted your relationship with Christ?
JENNIFER : In its essence, Christian fiction picks up the use of parables (rem: YESSS!)
and continues the importance that Jesus placed on a good story that had an impact and taught without heavy-handed preaching and guilt-tripping. Writing has made me so much more aware of how smart readers are, and how deep they will go with a character. It’s also made me lean fully on Him, because this is a hard gig.
rem: So true, Jennifer. Readers are smart creatures. I know I don’t appreciate it when I’m reading to have the author oversimplify or overstate something—like I’m / we’re too dumb to get it. When reading, what makes or breaks a story for you? Your fiction pet peeve?
JENNIFER : Preachy characters who turn every, single, solitary conversation into a sermon and deeply profound theological life lesson. (rem: YESSSS!!!! UGH!!!) Seriously, most 20-somethings do not have the levels of seminary knowledge that I’ve seen some characters display in some books. That, and fictional homesteading men who smell like fresh-mown hay. Come on. They smell, all right…
rem: Exactly! What are you reading right now?
JENNIFER : A pile of books (opens arms wide) that thick!
rem: Bahahahah!! Looks like my TRB, um, pile, list, catalogue… Borrowing a question from your website, “What exactly is a Canadian doing writing about Navajo history?”
JENNIFER : Well, that’s a really good question! When I made the choice to finally start writing fiction (after decades of my husband telling me to give it a try) I looked up ‘New Mexico history’. The first story was on The Long Walk of the Navajo and the prison camp known as Bosque Redondo. I could not fathom how such a horrible event could happen, and then I had fiction writer’s light bulb moment of “what if…” . I’ve done years and years of research, and interviewed all kinds of people, including the grandchildren of survivors. This is their story, I just wrote it down.
rem: Now, that’s dedication! What is the most fascinating bit of Navajo history have you discovered?
JENNIFER : That they traded knowledge and plants with a Spanish noblewoman in the early 1600s and up until 1864, Canyon de Chelly had vast peach orchards.
rem: That is fascinating, indeed. You had a bit of an upset in your writing career last year. What happened in 2013 to make you never doubt your calling?
JENNIFER : Oh my, yes! After an intense week of research (conversation and exploration) in November, I’d been praying for God to let me know if I was doing the right thing, and on the right path. I said goodbye to my hosts and boarded a train from Gallup to Albuquerque. My seat mate was a man named Max Perez. I initially didn’t want to talk to anyone, and he was having none of my exhausted introvert behavior. So, when he asked me what I was doing in New Mexico, I said “well, Max. I’m on a research trip for my writing. But today, I’ve been praying that God would tell me if I’m doing what He wants me to do” thinking that the mention of God would send him running. Nope. Max was a kind and gregarious man, and knew how to draw me out, and long story short, he wanted to hear the about the book. I tried to give him the standard elevator pitch, but noooo…he wanted names, locations, the whole thing. So, first, I told him that the main character was named Nez and had changed his name to Natanii. He blinked, then said “when we’re done, ask me the name of my first school.” I thought, Lord, how is this relevant? What kind of request is that? Anyway, over the time it took to tell the story, yes he’d interrupted and asked a few hundred questions, then he looked me in the eyes and said “Okay, now ask me the name of my first school.”
Okay, whatever, talk about self-absorbed, eh?
I said “Max, what is the name of your first school?”
He got all serious and stoic and said “Jennifer, the name of my first school is Natanii Nez Elementary School. You’re where God wants you to be, and you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.”
BOOM. My heart stopped and I had chills so bad that I needed a sweater!
Yes, I repeat that moment to myself A LOT.
rem: Jennifer, I love this story! Gives me chills! Do you have a new direction?
JENNIFER : Yes, since the Navajo books are hard to sell, and getting a new agent is proving to be just as hard. I’m currently working on some contemporaries, and a World War Two novel.
rem: Hard call to make, to put your passion aside, but I can’t wait to see where your stories go. (and I suspect, perhaps, a contemporary Navajo might pop up in a story somewhere. #winkwink) Tell us a little about your writing journey.
JENNIFER : I started out thinking I knew what to do. I did not have a CLUE!! So I wrote, and studied craft and history books and rewrote everything I’d written. That only took a few years.
rem: GURL! Didn’t we all! What are your top 3 recommendations for a new writer? What 3 things would recommend not doing?
JENNIFER :
3 recommendations: 1) Study the craft. 2)Be humble. 3) Learn that good critiques are not about you, they’re about your work, and listen to what your more experienced mentors are saying.
3 Nos: Never think you’re the one to break the rules and get away with it, only the big names can do that and they earned the right to do stuff a newb couldn’t do. 2) Never ever think that your work is unlike anything ever written and is the next (insert blockbuster here) 3) Do not friend a writer and then 30 seconds later ask them for something. Ever. That is beyond tactless and will get you nowhere fast.
rem: 100% agree, especially that last bit! Beyond rude!! #petpeeve How do you choose your characters’ names?
JENNIFER : I had to learn that Navajo names are different from the names given in other Indigenous cultures, then choose from a list, and then I had to get approval from my Navajo mentor. Oh, there’s another extremely important point. When crossing into a culture not your own, study, study, study, and find a mentor willing to help you. And be ready for correction and always be humble about it.
rem: Learnt something new! I love learning details like that. (and have a particular fondness for Indigenous cultures—because of a fictional story! Which happened to be set in Navajo territory and culture. #winkwink ) Do you think of the entire story before you start writing?
JENNIFER : I have an outline of how I want the story to go, but occasionally things change.
rem: Tell us a little about your latest book? What is your current project?
JENNIFER : I have a few on the stove, but I’ll tell you about one…it’s a contemporary about an African-American NFL player/social media bad-boy named Carter Trane who falls for a white woman named Maisie Owens who’s in Witness Protection… because her father led a Klan murder.
rem: Holy oy! Might be a teeny bit of conflict there! What is YOUR favorite part about the book or why do you love this book? Why should we read it?
JENNIFER : Maisie falls hard for Carter, but knows that one photo of the two of them could bring her father’s wrath down on them both, so after a short romance, Maisie leaves a note for Carter and tells him that she can’t stand that he’s black and he makes her sick. Then she tries to escape to New Zealand. His father is with the FBI and helps Carter, who is livid and heart-broken, catch her before she gets on a plane. When Carter finds out who she is, and that the hate-filled note was a lie, and that Maisie tried to sacrifice to her father to keep Carter alive, Carter realizes just how deeply she loves him. I think readers are more than ready to go to hard places and meet people for whom love is about where we go as a person, to laugh and swoon a lot, and to come away from the story ready to go back to page 1.
rem: #swoons!! And I agree, Jennifer—at least I know I would rather read stories with real issues, tough things we deal with in real life. (It’s what I write, too.) Please give us the first page of the book.
JENNIFER :
Monday, January 13th.
Vancouver, BC.
7:14am
Maisie hit the snooze button before the familiar tinny shrill could blast into her brain again.
She hauled her pillow back over her head and snuggled in the warmth of her bed to wait out the six minutes of peace.
When the ringtone version of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera chorus Va’, pensiero once more trilled beside her head, Maisie sat up, shoved aside the pile of crumpled tissues from last night’s marathon crying-jag, and picked up her phone. She stared at the screen shot of a seagull in flight over Spanish Banks. It’d been a gorgeous day in July and she and Libby were tossing French fries up into the air for the birds.
Va’, pensiero, sull’ali dorate. Italian for ‘fly thoughts, on wings of gold’.
Such a beautiful choral piece and so perfectly suited to her life. Loss, pain, heartbreak, and the undying will to survive. If that was on a t-shirt, Maisie would buy ten of them. Which wasn’t pathetic or maudlin at all.
Maisie balled her fists and punched the covers. She seriously needed to suck it up.
Then again, what did her dear departed foster mother say whenever Maisie tried way too hard to prove that she had titanium nerves and a Kevlar spine? “Maisie, I know you’re strong, but even the bravest soldiers know when to seek cover and wait for reinforcements.”
The chorus trilled again.
Ah, if only she could fly like thoughts on wings of gold and escape, like the captive Hebrew slaves in the Verdi opera, if only just for a day.
One day—one lousy day—far away from the wet, oppressive chill that was Vancouver in January. Maybe somewhere exotic, with a warm husband who wouldn’t know about her skeletons. Then again, if that were to happen? There’d be some real ones. Starting with hers.
“Get a grip. Just where would you go, huh? You can barely handle life now, running away again won’t solve anything. Be the strong woman you always are. Take life by the horns and live.”
Sure.
Suuuuure.
Live? As if.
“Or? Maybe just get up.”
There was no need to turn on her bedside lamp because it had been on since she’d crawled into bed the night before at the wild and crazy hour of 9pm. She didn’t need to go to bed at such an early hour, but her options last night were to either keep crying or go to sleep. Either way, the pain in her chest was the same, the echoes throughout her big apartment were the same, and as it had been since she watched her foster parent’s ashes float away in the wind off Lighthouse Point, the crippling, soul-gutting loneliness was the same.
If loneliness was crippling, then regret was what kicked away the crutches. The regret of following the Bennett’s s wishes and setting their ashes into the wind over the ocean knocked Maisie to the ground. Oh, to have an actual grave to visit. Somewhere to sit and talk to the only loving parents she’d ever had. But that decision, like most of the other choices in her life, was non-negotiable and out of her hands, at least that what the Bennett’s s lawyers said.
One thing that was in her hands, so to speak, was remaining safely alone. No one could tell her what to do, or when to do it. Which was just an excuse the lonely told themselves in order to stay sane
Although, it might be nice to share a couch on a rainy night and watch a movie with someone special. Or play a game of checkers. Or even learn chess. But the downside to that was always the truth. The truth could set you free. Or it could kill you.
Mostly kill you.
Maisie slammed her palms on the bed. “All right. That’s it. Get off the Pity Train and get it together. Besides, if I’m lucky, maybe Bardon will come by and make me nauseous with his fishy handshake.”
Ugh, maybe a long hot shower would do her good.
So would staying as quiet as a mouse, as solitary as a lone wolf, and as invisible as a faded beige wallflower.
If she could do that? Maisie would stay alive.
Too bad that quiet, solitary, and invisible were already killing her.
rem: There’s a lot in them there words! Jennifer, I do like your style. (no surprise there, eh!) What is one take-away from your book(s) that you hope readers identify with?
JENNIFER : Love takes sacrifice. Sometimes we have to be that sacrifice.
rem: Not easy, but oh! so true! And so worth it. Anything you’d like to add?
JENNIFER : Thank you so much for this, it’s been great!!
rem: So glad to have you visit my little nest, Jennifer. Thank you so much for chatting with us today!
www.jennifermajorbooks.com
https://www.facebook.com/JenniferMajorWriter
https://twitter.com/JJumping
https://www.instagram.com/jennifermajor1989/
“Sometimes when the crowd has left, or never showed up, but you believe in your skills and talents, and you’re standing on the stage, you have to choose to keep the show going because someday the lights will come on. When they do, you have to be ready.”
#Blogwords, Chat Thursday, Author Interview, Jennifer Major
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