Episode 013 - Writing in Time with Jane Kelly
January 12, 2020
This episode’s topic takes a cue from the name of one of Jane’s series—Writing in Time—because the topics of many of Jane’s books are closely tied to a specific time and an event of that time. We discuss the research Jane did on those topics, and what she found.
Jane Kelly is a native of Philadelphia, close to the Jersey Shore settings of the Meg Daniels Mysteries: Killing Time in Ocean City, Cape Mayhem, Wrong Beach Island, Missing You in Atlantic City, and Greetings from Ventnor City. Jane is also the author of the Widow Lady Mysteries and the Writing in Time Mysteries. Jane has a MS in Information Studies from Drexel University and a Master of Philosophy in Popular Literature from Trinity College at the University of Dublin. She is the past president of the Delaware Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime and serves on the board of the New York Chapter of Mystery Writers of America.
Matty: Hello and welcome to the Indy Author Podcast. Today I am here with Jane Kelly. Hello, Jane!
Jane: Hi, Matty. Thank you for having me.
Matty: Thank you for joining The Indy Author Podcast today. We're going to be taking a cue from the name of one of Jane's series for our conversation today, Writing in Time, because many of the topics of Jane's books are closely tied to a specific time and an event of that time.
We want to be discussing the research Jane did on those topics, and what she found when she did that research. Jane, why don't we start out, give us a little bit of background about the books you've written that are very tied to a particular event in time.
Jane: The two most recent Meg Daniels Mysteries, which are set at the Jersey shore--Missing You in Atlantic City and Greetings from Ventnor City--have as a backdrop two key events in Atlantic City history. Missing You in Atlantic City is set against the backdrop of the Democratic National Convention, which was held in Atlantic City in 1964, and in Greetings from Ventnor City the backdrop for that is the 1969 Miss America pageant held in September, 1968, which was a pivotal moment in second wave feminism because there were protests on the boardwalk outside the pageant.
So those two books are tied directly to those events, not about those events, but they serve as a backdrop. In the Writing in Time series, I have one that's tied to the 1964 Philly Swoon, the September Swoon, when they blew the pennant--people gasp when I mentioned that still--and that's set against that backdrop and has a parallel between the events of that and the events in the crime.
And the other one is Pretender, which is set against the backdrop of the press coverage of Grace Kelly's wedding, which was a big deal for Philadelphia. So those two, the Writing in Time is Philadelphia-based and the other two are Jersey shore-based.
Matty: And are those all your home bases, Philadelphia and the Jersey shore?
Jane: Right. I grew up in Philadelphia, and every single year I'm sure I've been to the Jersey shore. When I lived in different places, sometimes it was only for a day, sometimes it was for a month, but I always got there every year, and that's a lot of years.
Matty: When you were writing these books, do you pick the event first and then you write a story around it?
Or do you know the larger story first and then you find an event that ties in with it?
Jane: I know the event first because, for example, the Atlantic City books, the one where the missing person comes from Ventnor, which you can walk from Ventnor to Atlantic City, they were two really big events for Atlantic City in the 60s and that's why I picked them.
I love writing about that era and I was interested in those two events, so I was able to pick those events first.
Matty: What particularly about that era appeals to you?
Jane: I love things especially from the early sixties and Missing You in Atlantic City set in 1964 I always liken it to the family in the book, standing on the beach, posing for a picture with the ocean behind them, not knowing that this huge tidal wave of social change is about to wipe them away and change everything. And that's what I really like about the years ’62 to ’64 because basically everything started to change then. Social change was just phenomenal and moving at a very quick rate. It's a very different sixties in 1968 when I set Greeting from Ventnor City. That's a very, very different time. Most people are still adjusting, but a much larger part of the population has moved on into a whole new era.
It's like the ’50s lasted till about 64 and people think of the sixties really started then and by ’68 a large part of the population is living in the ’60s and having conflict with the people who are still living in the ’50s.
Matty: How much of that background were you able to glean from either your own experience or what you heard your parents or other adults of that time talking about and how much did you have to research in order to get that perspective that you just described.
Jane: Well, I should've been able to get all of it from my own personal experience. I like to write about people who are a little older than I am because I think it's easier when you're a kid. You're observing everything. You're not part of it. You're observing it. You haven't taken a side. You don't have a position. You're kind of viewing the whole world, and that's why I really think I like to write about people who are a little bit older than I am.
I was shocked to realize that actually the girl in Greetings from Ventnor City would actually be a year younger than I am. And I didn't piece that together. I knew it when I was writing it, I guess, but lately when I went back to look through it, I thought, no, we are the same age, but you still have to do a lot of research because, number one, you have to test your memory. I have someone who swears that at the ’68 protests on the boardwalk, she saw people burning bras. Nothing was burned, but it's such a part of the media and the legend. The term bra burner was spawned from that. I think it was the Atlantic City press coverage of that event that, you really have to go back and test all that and research and see if it's all true. Plus there's all the little things that you have to check up on.
What I like to have is to really know what the character was living with--the music, the movies, the culture, everything, how they would be dressed, what the dress meant, because it meant a lot in that era. How you were dressed. You could tell people and their beliefs, by the way they were dressed when they arrived. There's a lot of research that goes into it.
Matty: How do you go about confirming something not happening like that the bra burning really didn't happen.
Jane: That's the hardest part. Something like that. Because I had an eyewitness who swore it did happen. But there are diaries that were written by women who were there and when they were published, especially when the ’50 year anniversary came around there were a lot of publications that cover the anniversary of the protest and a lot of the people who had been there said nothing was ever burned and they were never burned because they were such polite protestors. They couldn't get a permit. And they were such obedient protestors that they did not burn anything on a wooden boardwalk. I mean, that made sense, they weren't going to violate that.
But it got all confused with the burning of draft cards. The concept of protest and burning were together, but they actually never burned anything. But they did throw lots of items into the freedom trashcan, including bras and cleaning equipment and beauty equipment and everything that were the stereotypical accoutrements of femininity in 1968.
Matty: A lot of the people who are listening to this are going to be authors themselves and I know that they'd be interested in finding out what resources you used in order to find this information.
Jane: I always start with the local newspapers. I go back and I read the local newspapers where the event happened, and I do that for a couple of reasons.
Number one, just to get the facts of what was going on, to see the attitude in the press of what was going on. And that was quite telling in terms of 1968 protests. The women weren't really taken seriously by the press. So that's important. The actual events are important. And in the newspapers, you see the whole world. You see the movies that are out, the other events of the day, housing prices, what people are liking. It's such a treasure. I hate to see them go away because they just have everything there for you in one place. They're just amazing.
So I always start there and then that gives me different things I want to read more about. And then, you know, you can find anything on YouTube basically. So I could watch the protests on YouTube. I could find interviews on YouTube that people did. And so you can do a lot online, but I also go out and do a lot of drive-around research.
And I think you do too. I'm looking at a place years later, so I can't take everything as it is, and I don't always use actual places because, if something bad is going to happen, I don't want it necessarily happening in somebody's house where they now live.
So I kind of hedge on something, but like the Convention Center, which actually figures in both Missing You in Atlantic City and Greetings from Ventnor City, that has changed a lot over the years, so I have to track pictures through the years to see what did it look like in ’64 what did it look like in ’68 and sometimes that's easier to do.
And for a place like that, it's easy because there are a lot of photos of it. But in the Pretender Writing in Time Mystery I set an event at a place that I remember very clearly, and it's not there anymore. And I can't even see the traces of it.
I began to doubt myself. And then I went to the library and I looked through all the pictures and it took forever just till I could say, yeah, it really was there because I remembered it so clearly, but now there's no sign of it.
Matty: So what pictures were you looking at in the library that finally enabled you to confirm that your memory was correct?
Jane: A local history book, local photography. It was in Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia, and so I went to the local library and I pulled out the local photo books and I went through them and it wasn't a heavily covered corner, so I had to look at a lot of pictures before I could find one that was taken on that corner during the timeframe I wanted.
It was a pain in the neck, actually, only to verify that it wasn't there anymore. I mean, that's the thing. I didn't get a good picture of what it looked like back then because the photo was sort of taken from the place where I staged the murder, and so it was frustrating, but I got it done.
And on that topic, and I imagine you do this too, checking the mileage and the time when, how long it takes to get from one place to the other. So you kind of have to go back through the crime and re-enact your theory and what it would take. And so there's a lot of driving around doing it.
Matty: I did do that for The Sense of Death. I got out my timer and I drove the route that the killer would take to try to dispose of the body and made my own trip to the shore in the process of doing that. But it is fun to be able to step into the shoes of your character and act out what you're having them do.
Jane: And check out when the speed limits changed at the shore cause they're not the same all year. So you have to keep an eye on that type of thing and what the speed limits were back then. It's amazing though that you can find it out. It's just shocking what you can find out. Because there's someone out there who knows, there's one person out there who knows
Matty: how would you possibly research the speed limit question.
Jane: With the old ones, you just have to go through, old newspapers and things, and you can find somebody who was caught speeding on a certain road in the weekly crime logs. Sometimes, you just talk to people and they say it's always been that way.
If it's a highway, it's publicized. Like for example, when the new Atlantic City Expressway opened, they would tell you what the speed limit was because that was one of the features of the Atlantic City Expressway. You just have to dig in a lot of different ways to get it. And I probably overdo it because I really doing it for that one person who's going to say, "But in 1955, I drove from here to there and ..." But they're out there, you know? I know I go overboard--in general I go overboard on research--but I like it and I enjoy it.
Matty: how do you decide how much of that research you include?
Jane: The hardest part is not including too much, because the danger is putting something in because you can put it in, and it can disrupt the storyline if you'll think, well, I know it was happening that day, so I'll just throw in that the Phillies won that day or something. If it's not important to the story, you don't want to throw it in there. I think that's harder than knowing what to put in is knowing what not to put in.
Everything you do put in has to have some benefits to the story. And I always say research is defensive. You're looking to have a complete understanding of the setting where you're writing and the events of the day so you don't put in one word wrong. Because if you put in one word wrong, it betrays that you really didn't understand what was going on in the whole situation.
So I think of it as defensive and a lot of it's just for me to know that that one sentence that reflects so much research is accurate.
Matty: And I think also sometimes you have to dumb down the detail a little bit because even if the detail is correct, putting too much in can be a distraction for the reader.
So if you're specifying that he drove by the speed limit sign that said 55 even if you know that it was in fact 55, some reader is going to say, "Hmm. I wonder if it was really 55 ..." so there are all sorts of considerations for what to include and what not to include and what the impact is going to be when the reader gets to that detail.
Jane: Right, because readers love reading details like that. But like you said, you don't want to distract them. You don't want them thinking about that. You want to think about what the story is about and how it's moving through that scene, not "Was that really 55?" No, you don't want people stopping. You're right. So it's a danger.
Matty: I was just reading a book that took place in Chicago and it had a lot of detail about the character left this place, which was clearly a place in real life and turned right and walked a mile and I found myself putting the book aside and picking up my laptop and starting to type things into Google Maps because I started getting curious about how accurate it was. And it was all very accurate. But I thought, do I really want to be putting aside the book to look at Google Maps? Maybe not. Maybe that's the point at which one has gone overboard.
Jane: That's a good point. It really is. Cause I don't worry about that too much as much as I worry about the person who's going to argue about it, who thinks it's wrong. But I never thought, yeah, people will be just curious and will check things. So yeah, that's a real danger.
Matty: The whole availability of easy information in some cases has really changed the reading experience. Because I remember years ago when I read The Goldfinch and there were obviously a lot of references to artworks, and I found myself frequently putting the book aside and looking up the referenced artworks, and in that case, for whatever reason, it didn't feel like a distraction to me. It just felt like this convenient, extra medium I could use to experience the story. But it's a tricky decision to make that authors five or 10 or 15 or 20 years ago didn't have to face in quite the same way.
Jane: That's true because people might be interested in that, but they would save it up and look at an art book later in a bookstore or library. They would go and check it out. I put a lot of my research on Pinterest. I have a Pinterest page, which is JaneKelly80 and I have a page for every book and I put a lot of the research I did.
There or just things that might be interested. So if somebody is curious about what this vendor really look like, they can go take a drone tour of Ventnor on the Pinterest page, but I hope they don't do it in the middle of the book.
Matty: That's a great idea.
Jane: Yeah, and so there's one for every book there.
Matty: That's a great tip because I know a lot of fiction authors are a little bit perplexed about how they could use Pinterest, and that's a great tip for how to tie in a visual aspect with a fictional story.
Jane: I also have subcategories and I'll have a soundtrack for the time period of songs I think the person would like. Like the one about baseball have everything about 64 Phillies in there. The one about Grace Kelly's wedding, I'll have a lot of things about Grace Kelly in there so people can research it.
It's fun to do. And, trouble is, once a book is finished, I don't update it that often. So every once in a while, I go back and see if there's anything new coming in. And luckily there's never yet been anything that renders what I've done incorrect.
Matty: I just faced the situation with the manuscript. I just finished where it takes place in Maine, on Mount Desert Island where Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor are both areas I'm very familiar with. And for anyone who's gone to Acadia and gone to Bass Harbor Head Light, I have a scene that's set at Bass Harbor Head Light, and there's a stairway that leads from the parking lot down to the rocks from which people take that canonical picture of Bass Harbor Head Light that you'll see in any travel log of Maine. And when I first wrote the story it had been several months since my husband and I had been there. And I describe the woman, trying to get up the stairs after an event at the bottom of the stairs and she was sort of pushing herself up the stairs with hands on either railing because the railings were quite close together.
And then I went back and they had rebuilt the stairway and it was wider, so there's no way that anyone would be able to help themselves up the stairs. But if you read the historical background of the story carefully, and you were to look it up, it's not really taking place in current day, it's taking place maybe eight years ago. And so at the time that description would be accurate, but if somebody saw it now, it would not be accurate.
Then I had this dilemma of, do I reflect it as it would have been at this unmentioned time in the near past, or do I render it as it would be if someone saw it now? And I finally figured I'd stick with how it is now, because that ended up just being a level of historical accuracy that I wasn't concerned about because the exact time of the story was not as key as it is for the stories that you're discussing and the events you're using for background.
Jane: And that would invite questions, whereas using the older one might've been more accurate, it would have solicited questions.
Matty: Exactly. “I was just there and you could never do that on those stairs.” All those inevitable complaints.
Jane: Unless it's Michael Phelps maybe. But aside from that, it's not going to work, you know?
Matty: What is the earliest event that you've used as a topic of your books?
Jane: I have two unpublished books that are set in 1944 but I won't talk about them, but that was the one time I had to research an era before I was born.
But I would say my parents talk so much about the Christmas of 1944 that I remember it well, even though I wasn't born, you know, so I did have a lot of input from my parents on their era. I knew their music. I know a lot of things about their social aspects of their life. But for the books that are published, 1956 is the farthest I went back and that was to Grace Kelly's wedding. Which I have a vague recollection of because we got a postcard from the wedding and we had no idea who it was from, and that's why I remember it. And that turned out, it was from, my sister had a part time job at Gimbels and the president of Gimbels went and sent everyone a postcard who worked at Gimbels.
Matty: Oh, very interesting. I was thinking there might be the basis of a mystery story there based on your postcard.
Jane: No, and he only signed it with initials. How presumptuous is that? I think you can just sign it, AK and everybody will go, "Oh, of course." But it made the offense stick in my memory, and it was a very big deal for Philadelphia.
And that's what I tried to do with the Writing in Time series. Do events that were a big deal for Philadelphia, more social history than any political history. I'm just more interested in things that people were thinking about and talking about.
Matty: Are your marketing efforts focused mainly in the Philadelphia area and the shore? Do you feel like the specificity of your location in your events kind of leads you to market to that area specifically?
Jane: Yes. Really. I do target the local area and have ties to local bookstores and do a lot of local events, more so at the shore than even in Philadelphia, though all Philadelphians at some point go to the shore so they have some interest in it. So yeah, I do a lot more in this area than I do anywhere else.
Matty: I was curious about the unpublished works you wrote from the forties. Was there anything intrinsically different about the research you did for those versus ones that were more something you had personal experience with?
Jane: The one is set in the United States Homeland in Alabama in 1944. I have no knowledge of Alabama, no knowledge of 1944 in Alabama. That required a lot of research and a road trip. So I drove down to Florida to a conference and then wove my way back through Alabama.
For one thing, I just wanted to experience the heat in the summer. I wanted to know what it was like, what it was like to be in the woods, what bugs were out there. And then I visited libraries and museums, and then I found out that you probably get the best information if you sit at the hotel bar all night and ask questions. But I was almost to the tip of Alabama before I discovered that.
But that was very, very different because I had to look for World War II, and there are a lot of things that I think I know about World War II that I don't. For example, and this was right at the very end, I discovered this--you know how they would call Germans “Jerries”? I always thought that was G, E, R, R, I, E, S but it wasn't, it's J, E, R, R, I, E, S, and it's because of some name from a German word that the soldiers were given. And I always thought that POWs were POWs forever. But no, they were PWs back in that day. They weren't POWs. So it was just fraught with danger for that kind of thing.
And I really confirmed that in a couple of ways. I should say this is about a POW camp in Alabama in 1944 otherwise, you'll be wondering why I'm walking talking about POWs in Alabama. And their uniforms had PW on the back of them, so I could verify that in a picture.
So you just never know. I think you have to immerse yourself in the whole topic and look at things that you think won't have any interest to you. I had to go through old cookbooks because if she was going to sit down to dinner, she's a Northern girl sitting down to dinner in Alabama, she has to be surprised by some of the food. not that I'm going to dwell on dinner. It's one of those cases where an aside can be wrong and can take you out of the story if it isn't right. I was in all areas within that library, you know? A lot of libraries looking for different things. I get carried away. That took almost a month.
Matty: So your protagonist is Northern, right? She's visiting the South. Which I think is a good pick because it helps address the skepticism that people might have of saying, “How come you as a northerner are writing a Southern story?” but I think if you position it as someone who's going into that culture and going into that environment as an outsider, then it helps address some of that discomfort that sometimes people have if an author is writing about something that isn't very directly related to their own personal experience. Did you factor that in when you decided to make your character a Northern character?
Jane: Right. I mean, I had to make it someone I was familiar with, and the idea is she goes into a culture that she doesn't understand and, yes, she finds out there a lot of things that are wrong down there in 1944 but she's from Philadelphia, she finds out that the North isn't blameless. There's a lot of racism in the North, and she's blind to it in the North. She sees it in the South and understand, starts questioning, “Why didn't I notice that there were no black musicians in the Philadelphia orchestra? Why didn't I notice that there were no black students in my school? Why wasn't I noticing these things?”
So she learns a lot about the North as well as the South, and everyone in the South isn't portrayed as a stereotypical racist. There are people of different types all over. And the other thing that's important to me is it's not a white savior story. She doesn't go to the South and save anybody. She just learns that all she can do is really change who she is and the way she lives. If it's ever published--well, you could read it if it isn't published.
Matty: it's a fabulous story. I know you and I have talked about it before and I'm anxious for that day when not only I, but others can read it as well.
Jane: I have to try harder on that front.
Matty: Talk a little bit about Ventnor City because that's your newest, that's coming right up.
Jane: Well, my knowledge of Ventnor city is older than my character. Ventnor was the first seashore town that I actually remember. I don't know if I told you the story. My family used to go to Wildwood Crest every summer for the summer. It was part of my father's job. Well, having a summer house was part of his summer. Everyone was supposed to go, so in the ’40s they were given houses at the shore. They were expected to be in work during the week, and then everybody went down the shore on the weekend, but the wives were down there all week. And my mother hated it. She really hated it.
Matty: You said your dad's business provided him with a house at the shore?
Jane: Yeah, it was strange. I don't know why, not everybody in the company, but all the executives got a house at the shore.
so my mother hated it because she said everybody else gets a vacation. And I move my job. So luckily for her, I got very, very sick. She wasn't happy about that, but it was a good excuse to stop going because they kept having to rush me back to the hospital in Philadelphia when I was two-and-a-half.
So that's her way of getting out of going. but I don't remember all that. That's just stuff I've heard about. But Ventnor was the first town I remember going to and I had this very dapper uncle who lived this very sophisticated lifestyle. I always think he would have been happier in the 30s. And he brought our family to what I guess was called a boarding house in those days. And it was very elegant and very refined and my mother didn't have to cook and she didn't have to make beds, and that was in Ventnor. And so we went there, not for the whole summer, but we go for maybe a few weeks in the summer.
And that's my recollection of Ventnor. So that's the Ventnor I modeled it on. And the story probably takes place eight years later, but I don't think there was that much significant change except for anything that was damaged by the big storm in ’62. But I kind of hedge on that and the house didn't get damaged, I say that, so everything's still there.
But that's my image of Ventnor. I don't know really anything about modern day Ventnor. My knowledge of Ventnor is historical. And I have very fond memories of it and very fond memories of the boarding house and everyone who was there. It was great. I liked it. And you can walk to Atlantic City and get into trouble at the Miss America Pageant. And so that makes it very plausible that someone from Ventnor would get involved in that.
Matty: Without giving away too much of the current day story, what story did you build from the story you wanted to tell about Ventnor City?
Jane: I don't exactly remember the development. I wanted to start with the idea of somebody being at the protest. I'm not quite sure how she got to be a college-age girl, except that the ’60s, the new sixties were taking root in colleges faster than other places in the world so she would likely to get involved in the protest. From there it was just a matter of trying to look at all the changes a girl that age would go through and she's kind of trying everything. She's open to everything as she goes along. It kind of developed out of the need to tell the story of what was changing in 1968 that this very naive girl goes away to college, gets a boyfriend who's into the anti-war movement, so she sent to the anti-war movement. Then she comes home, she gets into feminism.
But I'm not critical of her, because I don't think she's a butterfly flitting from cause to cause. I think she's trying to find out what's true about all these different movements and she's absorbing the information into everything.
And then she disappears. And the reason I had her disappear is that in Missing You in Atlantic City, Meg solves this riddle of a disappearance from 50 years before, so someone approaches her because she's not a professional, but knowing she did that, to ask Meg to do something similar for her--it's the woman's sister, woman named Sally, who has disappeared. Her sister Maryanne asks Meg if she would try to find her. So it just kind of all fit together that way.
Matty: Did you have to do any research for the current day story?
Jane: That's a ride-around. Always go down and see what's new in Ventnor, check out the libraries and see what's back--like the fishing pier comes and goes with storms. Actually, I don't think it's completely gone since ’62, but making sure that things are where they used to be, that my memory is correct.
But a lot of it's done by reading plaques on the boardwalk. That's what makes it really easy. You can walk up and down the boardwalk and read plaques. I like to put in little things like that. There are benches on the boardwalk, but I just can't mention that, somebody has to need a bench.
It's the usual of going down, finding the post office--What time does the mail come in? What days did they open? It's that kind of thing. Just anything you would do for a current scene and that's more drive-around than anything else.
Matty: I know that people will be interested in finding out where they can get Ventnor City when it's out, I'm not sure that this is going to be before or after this podcast goes live, but it's January 14th, 2020, I believe. Is that right?
Jane: Right .
Matty: And where would people go to find that and to find out other information about you in general online?
Jane: For me, they can go to Janekelly.net or they can go on Facebook to Jane Kelly Author. I put very little on Instagram, but I do put book notices up at JaneKellyTrinity. And then, at Pinterest, JaneKelly80 has the background.
Since this is for authors, I will mention that I would have had an easier time, I could have just said it'll be available wherever books are sold, but my publisher uses Baker and Taylor as their distributor and Baker and Taylor stopped doing retail distribution. They still do libraries, and my publisher does a lot of work with them with libraries, but I don't know who will be distributing it to bookstores. At this point, I'm just trying to find bookstores that I know would be interested in having it, and my publisher does the same, but it makes it a little tricky.
That's one of those vagaries of the publishing world that authors should be aware of. This is the second time a distributor has gone away. After one of the first books I wrote maybe Long Beach Island, there had been a New Jersey Distributor who went out of business or closed his business for some reason. So it is a business and it's tricky.
Matty: Yeah. It's a business that's changing all the time as every month in the publishing world proves. And I guess that the change at Baker and Taylor just leaves Ingram as the main big name distributor of print copy books to bookstores.
Jane: A lot of independent authors use Ingram, don't they?
Matty: Yes. IngramSpark is the outlet for independent authors, which ties into the Ingram catalog, so indie authors who want to get their books available in a way that's appealing for bookstores to acquire would put them up on Ingram.
Jane: Because my publisher still uses Baker and Taylor for libraries, and this is just one imprint that they have--they do a lot of professional publishing, which doesn't really go into bookstores--I don't know if they're willing to change. So I really don't know what's going to happen.
Matty: It will be an interesting topic to check back in on over the months to see how that evolves because you hope that the publishers who had exclusively been using Baker and Taylor won't hold their authors hostage not being able to get to the bookstores.
Jane: Yeah. I don't know what's going to happen. I know there's some bookstores like Sun Rose in Ocean City, people can always go there and get it. Cloak and Dagger in Princeton, maybe they will cover it, but that's two bookstores that I know of and it used to be in so many, so I'll have to find out.
Matty: I guess it just takes more personal work by both the publisher and the author. When those kinds of changes happen and you have to step up to filling the gap, that otherwise would have been a more seamless process.
Jane: I know my publisher's working on it. He updates me. He's great that way, but no results yet, so I don't have anything to tell you yet about what's happening.
Matty: As time goes on, let me know if there are changes to where people should go for your books. I can post that in the comments of the podcast so that people can find you even in the future.
Jane: They're always available online through Barnes and Noble and Amazon and Kobo. So, yeah, there's online venues, but don't know so much about going in and picking up and looking at it. I have to find out about that.
Matty: Congratulations on the launch of yet another book, Jane, and thank you so much for sharing your information about writing in time and research. I think it's going to be helpful background to the listeners.
Jane: Thank you very much. Thanks for the invitation. It's been fun.
Matty: It has been.
Jane: Hi, Matty. Thank you for having me.
Matty: Thank you for joining The Indy Author Podcast today. We're going to be taking a cue from the name of one of Jane's series for our conversation today, Writing in Time, because many of the topics of Jane's books are closely tied to a specific time and an event of that time.
We want to be discussing the research Jane did on those topics, and what she found when she did that research. Jane, why don't we start out, give us a little bit of background about the books you've written that are very tied to a particular event in time.
Jane: The two most recent Meg Daniels Mysteries, which are set at the Jersey shore--Missing You in Atlantic City and Greetings from Ventnor City--have as a backdrop two key events in Atlantic City history. Missing You in Atlantic City is set against the backdrop of the Democratic National Convention, which was held in Atlantic City in 1964, and in Greetings from Ventnor City the backdrop for that is the 1969 Miss America pageant held in September, 1968, which was a pivotal moment in second wave feminism because there were protests on the boardwalk outside the pageant.
So those two books are tied directly to those events, not about those events, but they serve as a backdrop. In the Writing in Time series, I have one that's tied to the 1964 Philly Swoon, the September Swoon, when they blew the pennant--people gasp when I mentioned that still--and that's set against that backdrop and has a parallel between the events of that and the events in the crime.
And the other one is Pretender, which is set against the backdrop of the press coverage of Grace Kelly's wedding, which was a big deal for Philadelphia. So those two, the Writing in Time is Philadelphia-based and the other two are Jersey shore-based.
Matty: And are those all your home bases, Philadelphia and the Jersey shore?
Jane: Right. I grew up in Philadelphia, and every single year I'm sure I've been to the Jersey shore. When I lived in different places, sometimes it was only for a day, sometimes it was for a month, but I always got there every year, and that's a lot of years.
Matty: When you were writing these books, do you pick the event first and then you write a story around it?
Or do you know the larger story first and then you find an event that ties in with it?
Jane: I know the event first because, for example, the Atlantic City books, the one where the missing person comes from Ventnor, which you can walk from Ventnor to Atlantic City, they were two really big events for Atlantic City in the 60s and that's why I picked them.
I love writing about that era and I was interested in those two events, so I was able to pick those events first.
Matty: What particularly about that era appeals to you?
Jane: I love things especially from the early sixties and Missing You in Atlantic City set in 1964 I always liken it to the family in the book, standing on the beach, posing for a picture with the ocean behind them, not knowing that this huge tidal wave of social change is about to wipe them away and change everything. And that's what I really like about the years ’62 to ’64 because basically everything started to change then. Social change was just phenomenal and moving at a very quick rate. It's a very different sixties in 1968 when I set Greeting from Ventnor City. That's a very, very different time. Most people are still adjusting, but a much larger part of the population has moved on into a whole new era.
It's like the ’50s lasted till about 64 and people think of the sixties really started then and by ’68 a large part of the population is living in the ’60s and having conflict with the people who are still living in the ’50s.
Matty: How much of that background were you able to glean from either your own experience or what you heard your parents or other adults of that time talking about and how much did you have to research in order to get that perspective that you just described.
Jane: Well, I should've been able to get all of it from my own personal experience. I like to write about people who are a little older than I am because I think it's easier when you're a kid. You're observing everything. You're not part of it. You're observing it. You haven't taken a side. You don't have a position. You're kind of viewing the whole world, and that's why I really think I like to write about people who are a little bit older than I am.
I was shocked to realize that actually the girl in Greetings from Ventnor City would actually be a year younger than I am. And I didn't piece that together. I knew it when I was writing it, I guess, but lately when I went back to look through it, I thought, no, we are the same age, but you still have to do a lot of research because, number one, you have to test your memory. I have someone who swears that at the ’68 protests on the boardwalk, she saw people burning bras. Nothing was burned, but it's such a part of the media and the legend. The term bra burner was spawned from that. I think it was the Atlantic City press coverage of that event that, you really have to go back and test all that and research and see if it's all true. Plus there's all the little things that you have to check up on.
What I like to have is to really know what the character was living with--the music, the movies, the culture, everything, how they would be dressed, what the dress meant, because it meant a lot in that era. How you were dressed. You could tell people and their beliefs, by the way they were dressed when they arrived. There's a lot of research that goes into it.
Matty: How do you go about confirming something not happening like that the bra burning really didn't happen.
Jane: That's the hardest part. Something like that. Because I had an eyewitness who swore it did happen. But there are diaries that were written by women who were there and when they were published, especially when the ’50 year anniversary came around there were a lot of publications that cover the anniversary of the protest and a lot of the people who had been there said nothing was ever burned and they were never burned because they were such polite protestors. They couldn't get a permit. And they were such obedient protestors that they did not burn anything on a wooden boardwalk. I mean, that made sense, they weren't going to violate that.
But it got all confused with the burning of draft cards. The concept of protest and burning were together, but they actually never burned anything. But they did throw lots of items into the freedom trashcan, including bras and cleaning equipment and beauty equipment and everything that were the stereotypical accoutrements of femininity in 1968.
Matty: A lot of the people who are listening to this are going to be authors themselves and I know that they'd be interested in finding out what resources you used in order to find this information.
Jane: I always start with the local newspapers. I go back and I read the local newspapers where the event happened, and I do that for a couple of reasons.
Number one, just to get the facts of what was going on, to see the attitude in the press of what was going on. And that was quite telling in terms of 1968 protests. The women weren't really taken seriously by the press. So that's important. The actual events are important. And in the newspapers, you see the whole world. You see the movies that are out, the other events of the day, housing prices, what people are liking. It's such a treasure. I hate to see them go away because they just have everything there for you in one place. They're just amazing.
So I always start there and then that gives me different things I want to read more about. And then, you know, you can find anything on YouTube basically. So I could watch the protests on YouTube. I could find interviews on YouTube that people did. And so you can do a lot online, but I also go out and do a lot of drive-around research.
And I think you do too. I'm looking at a place years later, so I can't take everything as it is, and I don't always use actual places because, if something bad is going to happen, I don't want it necessarily happening in somebody's house where they now live.
So I kind of hedge on something, but like the Convention Center, which actually figures in both Missing You in Atlantic City and Greetings from Ventnor City, that has changed a lot over the years, so I have to track pictures through the years to see what did it look like in ’64 what did it look like in ’68 and sometimes that's easier to do.
And for a place like that, it's easy because there are a lot of photos of it. But in the Pretender Writing in Time Mystery I set an event at a place that I remember very clearly, and it's not there anymore. And I can't even see the traces of it.
I began to doubt myself. And then I went to the library and I looked through all the pictures and it took forever just till I could say, yeah, it really was there because I remembered it so clearly, but now there's no sign of it.
Matty: So what pictures were you looking at in the library that finally enabled you to confirm that your memory was correct?
Jane: A local history book, local photography. It was in Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia, and so I went to the local library and I pulled out the local photo books and I went through them and it wasn't a heavily covered corner, so I had to look at a lot of pictures before I could find one that was taken on that corner during the timeframe I wanted.
It was a pain in the neck, actually, only to verify that it wasn't there anymore. I mean, that's the thing. I didn't get a good picture of what it looked like back then because the photo was sort of taken from the place where I staged the murder, and so it was frustrating, but I got it done.
And on that topic, and I imagine you do this too, checking the mileage and the time when, how long it takes to get from one place to the other. So you kind of have to go back through the crime and re-enact your theory and what it would take. And so there's a lot of driving around doing it.
Matty: I did do that for The Sense of Death. I got out my timer and I drove the route that the killer would take to try to dispose of the body and made my own trip to the shore in the process of doing that. But it is fun to be able to step into the shoes of your character and act out what you're having them do.
Jane: And check out when the speed limits changed at the shore cause they're not the same all year. So you have to keep an eye on that type of thing and what the speed limits were back then. It's amazing though that you can find it out. It's just shocking what you can find out. Because there's someone out there who knows, there's one person out there who knows
Matty: how would you possibly research the speed limit question.
Jane: With the old ones, you just have to go through, old newspapers and things, and you can find somebody who was caught speeding on a certain road in the weekly crime logs. Sometimes, you just talk to people and they say it's always been that way.
If it's a highway, it's publicized. Like for example, when the new Atlantic City Expressway opened, they would tell you what the speed limit was because that was one of the features of the Atlantic City Expressway. You just have to dig in a lot of different ways to get it. And I probably overdo it because I really doing it for that one person who's going to say, "But in 1955, I drove from here to there and ..." But they're out there, you know? I know I go overboard--in general I go overboard on research--but I like it and I enjoy it.
Matty: how do you decide how much of that research you include?
Jane: The hardest part is not including too much, because the danger is putting something in because you can put it in, and it can disrupt the storyline if you'll think, well, I know it was happening that day, so I'll just throw in that the Phillies won that day or something. If it's not important to the story, you don't want to throw it in there. I think that's harder than knowing what to put in is knowing what not to put in.
Everything you do put in has to have some benefits to the story. And I always say research is defensive. You're looking to have a complete understanding of the setting where you're writing and the events of the day so you don't put in one word wrong. Because if you put in one word wrong, it betrays that you really didn't understand what was going on in the whole situation.
So I think of it as defensive and a lot of it's just for me to know that that one sentence that reflects so much research is accurate.
Matty: And I think also sometimes you have to dumb down the detail a little bit because even if the detail is correct, putting too much in can be a distraction for the reader.
So if you're specifying that he drove by the speed limit sign that said 55 even if you know that it was in fact 55, some reader is going to say, "Hmm. I wonder if it was really 55 ..." so there are all sorts of considerations for what to include and what not to include and what the impact is going to be when the reader gets to that detail.
Jane: Right, because readers love reading details like that. But like you said, you don't want to distract them. You don't want them thinking about that. You want to think about what the story is about and how it's moving through that scene, not "Was that really 55?" No, you don't want people stopping. You're right. So it's a danger.
Matty: I was just reading a book that took place in Chicago and it had a lot of detail about the character left this place, which was clearly a place in real life and turned right and walked a mile and I found myself putting the book aside and picking up my laptop and starting to type things into Google Maps because I started getting curious about how accurate it was. And it was all very accurate. But I thought, do I really want to be putting aside the book to look at Google Maps? Maybe not. Maybe that's the point at which one has gone overboard.
Jane: That's a good point. It really is. Cause I don't worry about that too much as much as I worry about the person who's going to argue about it, who thinks it's wrong. But I never thought, yeah, people will be just curious and will check things. So yeah, that's a real danger.
Matty: The whole availability of easy information in some cases has really changed the reading experience. Because I remember years ago when I read The Goldfinch and there were obviously a lot of references to artworks, and I found myself frequently putting the book aside and looking up the referenced artworks, and in that case, for whatever reason, it didn't feel like a distraction to me. It just felt like this convenient, extra medium I could use to experience the story. But it's a tricky decision to make that authors five or 10 or 15 or 20 years ago didn't have to face in quite the same way.
Jane: That's true because people might be interested in that, but they would save it up and look at an art book later in a bookstore or library. They would go and check it out. I put a lot of my research on Pinterest. I have a Pinterest page, which is JaneKelly80 and I have a page for every book and I put a lot of the research I did.
There or just things that might be interested. So if somebody is curious about what this vendor really look like, they can go take a drone tour of Ventnor on the Pinterest page, but I hope they don't do it in the middle of the book.
Matty: That's a great idea.
Jane: Yeah, and so there's one for every book there.
Matty: That's a great tip because I know a lot of fiction authors are a little bit perplexed about how they could use Pinterest, and that's a great tip for how to tie in a visual aspect with a fictional story.
Jane: I also have subcategories and I'll have a soundtrack for the time period of songs I think the person would like. Like the one about baseball have everything about 64 Phillies in there. The one about Grace Kelly's wedding, I'll have a lot of things about Grace Kelly in there so people can research it.
It's fun to do. And, trouble is, once a book is finished, I don't update it that often. So every once in a while, I go back and see if there's anything new coming in. And luckily there's never yet been anything that renders what I've done incorrect.
Matty: I just faced the situation with the manuscript. I just finished where it takes place in Maine, on Mount Desert Island where Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor are both areas I'm very familiar with. And for anyone who's gone to Acadia and gone to Bass Harbor Head Light, I have a scene that's set at Bass Harbor Head Light, and there's a stairway that leads from the parking lot down to the rocks from which people take that canonical picture of Bass Harbor Head Light that you'll see in any travel log of Maine. And when I first wrote the story it had been several months since my husband and I had been there. And I describe the woman, trying to get up the stairs after an event at the bottom of the stairs and she was sort of pushing herself up the stairs with hands on either railing because the railings were quite close together.
And then I went back and they had rebuilt the stairway and it was wider, so there's no way that anyone would be able to help themselves up the stairs. But if you read the historical background of the story carefully, and you were to look it up, it's not really taking place in current day, it's taking place maybe eight years ago. And so at the time that description would be accurate, but if somebody saw it now, it would not be accurate.
Then I had this dilemma of, do I reflect it as it would have been at this unmentioned time in the near past, or do I render it as it would be if someone saw it now? And I finally figured I'd stick with how it is now, because that ended up just being a level of historical accuracy that I wasn't concerned about because the exact time of the story was not as key as it is for the stories that you're discussing and the events you're using for background.
Jane: And that would invite questions, whereas using the older one might've been more accurate, it would have solicited questions.
Matty: Exactly. “I was just there and you could never do that on those stairs.” All those inevitable complaints.
Jane: Unless it's Michael Phelps maybe. But aside from that, it's not going to work, you know?
Matty: What is the earliest event that you've used as a topic of your books?
Jane: I have two unpublished books that are set in 1944 but I won't talk about them, but that was the one time I had to research an era before I was born.
But I would say my parents talk so much about the Christmas of 1944 that I remember it well, even though I wasn't born, you know, so I did have a lot of input from my parents on their era. I knew their music. I know a lot of things about their social aspects of their life. But for the books that are published, 1956 is the farthest I went back and that was to Grace Kelly's wedding. Which I have a vague recollection of because we got a postcard from the wedding and we had no idea who it was from, and that's why I remember it. And that turned out, it was from, my sister had a part time job at Gimbels and the president of Gimbels went and sent everyone a postcard who worked at Gimbels.
Matty: Oh, very interesting. I was thinking there might be the basis of a mystery story there based on your postcard.
Jane: No, and he only signed it with initials. How presumptuous is that? I think you can just sign it, AK and everybody will go, "Oh, of course." But it made the offense stick in my memory, and it was a very big deal for Philadelphia.
And that's what I tried to do with the Writing in Time series. Do events that were a big deal for Philadelphia, more social history than any political history. I'm just more interested in things that people were thinking about and talking about.
Matty: Are your marketing efforts focused mainly in the Philadelphia area and the shore? Do you feel like the specificity of your location in your events kind of leads you to market to that area specifically?
Jane: Yes. Really. I do target the local area and have ties to local bookstores and do a lot of local events, more so at the shore than even in Philadelphia, though all Philadelphians at some point go to the shore so they have some interest in it. So yeah, I do a lot more in this area than I do anywhere else.
Matty: I was curious about the unpublished works you wrote from the forties. Was there anything intrinsically different about the research you did for those versus ones that were more something you had personal experience with?
Jane: The one is set in the United States Homeland in Alabama in 1944. I have no knowledge of Alabama, no knowledge of 1944 in Alabama. That required a lot of research and a road trip. So I drove down to Florida to a conference and then wove my way back through Alabama.
For one thing, I just wanted to experience the heat in the summer. I wanted to know what it was like, what it was like to be in the woods, what bugs were out there. And then I visited libraries and museums, and then I found out that you probably get the best information if you sit at the hotel bar all night and ask questions. But I was almost to the tip of Alabama before I discovered that.
But that was very, very different because I had to look for World War II, and there are a lot of things that I think I know about World War II that I don't. For example, and this was right at the very end, I discovered this--you know how they would call Germans “Jerries”? I always thought that was G, E, R, R, I, E, S but it wasn't, it's J, E, R, R, I, E, S, and it's because of some name from a German word that the soldiers were given. And I always thought that POWs were POWs forever. But no, they were PWs back in that day. They weren't POWs. So it was just fraught with danger for that kind of thing.
And I really confirmed that in a couple of ways. I should say this is about a POW camp in Alabama in 1944 otherwise, you'll be wondering why I'm walking talking about POWs in Alabama. And their uniforms had PW on the back of them, so I could verify that in a picture.
So you just never know. I think you have to immerse yourself in the whole topic and look at things that you think won't have any interest to you. I had to go through old cookbooks because if she was going to sit down to dinner, she's a Northern girl sitting down to dinner in Alabama, she has to be surprised by some of the food. not that I'm going to dwell on dinner. It's one of those cases where an aside can be wrong and can take you out of the story if it isn't right. I was in all areas within that library, you know? A lot of libraries looking for different things. I get carried away. That took almost a month.
Matty: So your protagonist is Northern, right? She's visiting the South. Which I think is a good pick because it helps address the skepticism that people might have of saying, “How come you as a northerner are writing a Southern story?” but I think if you position it as someone who's going into that culture and going into that environment as an outsider, then it helps address some of that discomfort that sometimes people have if an author is writing about something that isn't very directly related to their own personal experience. Did you factor that in when you decided to make your character a Northern character?
Jane: Right. I mean, I had to make it someone I was familiar with, and the idea is she goes into a culture that she doesn't understand and, yes, she finds out there a lot of things that are wrong down there in 1944 but she's from Philadelphia, she finds out that the North isn't blameless. There's a lot of racism in the North, and she's blind to it in the North. She sees it in the South and understand, starts questioning, “Why didn't I notice that there were no black musicians in the Philadelphia orchestra? Why didn't I notice that there were no black students in my school? Why wasn't I noticing these things?”
So she learns a lot about the North as well as the South, and everyone in the South isn't portrayed as a stereotypical racist. There are people of different types all over. And the other thing that's important to me is it's not a white savior story. She doesn't go to the South and save anybody. She just learns that all she can do is really change who she is and the way she lives. If it's ever published--well, you could read it if it isn't published.
Matty: it's a fabulous story. I know you and I have talked about it before and I'm anxious for that day when not only I, but others can read it as well.
Jane: I have to try harder on that front.
Matty: Talk a little bit about Ventnor City because that's your newest, that's coming right up.
Jane: Well, my knowledge of Ventnor city is older than my character. Ventnor was the first seashore town that I actually remember. I don't know if I told you the story. My family used to go to Wildwood Crest every summer for the summer. It was part of my father's job. Well, having a summer house was part of his summer. Everyone was supposed to go, so in the ’40s they were given houses at the shore. They were expected to be in work during the week, and then everybody went down the shore on the weekend, but the wives were down there all week. And my mother hated it. She really hated it.
Matty: You said your dad's business provided him with a house at the shore?
Jane: Yeah, it was strange. I don't know why, not everybody in the company, but all the executives got a house at the shore.
so my mother hated it because she said everybody else gets a vacation. And I move my job. So luckily for her, I got very, very sick. She wasn't happy about that, but it was a good excuse to stop going because they kept having to rush me back to the hospital in Philadelphia when I was two-and-a-half.
So that's her way of getting out of going. but I don't remember all that. That's just stuff I've heard about. But Ventnor was the first town I remember going to and I had this very dapper uncle who lived this very sophisticated lifestyle. I always think he would have been happier in the 30s. And he brought our family to what I guess was called a boarding house in those days. And it was very elegant and very refined and my mother didn't have to cook and she didn't have to make beds, and that was in Ventnor. And so we went there, not for the whole summer, but we go for maybe a few weeks in the summer.
And that's my recollection of Ventnor. So that's the Ventnor I modeled it on. And the story probably takes place eight years later, but I don't think there was that much significant change except for anything that was damaged by the big storm in ’62. But I kind of hedge on that and the house didn't get damaged, I say that, so everything's still there.
But that's my image of Ventnor. I don't know really anything about modern day Ventnor. My knowledge of Ventnor is historical. And I have very fond memories of it and very fond memories of the boarding house and everyone who was there. It was great. I liked it. And you can walk to Atlantic City and get into trouble at the Miss America Pageant. And so that makes it very plausible that someone from Ventnor would get involved in that.
Matty: Without giving away too much of the current day story, what story did you build from the story you wanted to tell about Ventnor City?
Jane: I don't exactly remember the development. I wanted to start with the idea of somebody being at the protest. I'm not quite sure how she got to be a college-age girl, except that the ’60s, the new sixties were taking root in colleges faster than other places in the world so she would likely to get involved in the protest. From there it was just a matter of trying to look at all the changes a girl that age would go through and she's kind of trying everything. She's open to everything as she goes along. It kind of developed out of the need to tell the story of what was changing in 1968 that this very naive girl goes away to college, gets a boyfriend who's into the anti-war movement, so she sent to the anti-war movement. Then she comes home, she gets into feminism.
But I'm not critical of her, because I don't think she's a butterfly flitting from cause to cause. I think she's trying to find out what's true about all these different movements and she's absorbing the information into everything.
And then she disappears. And the reason I had her disappear is that in Missing You in Atlantic City, Meg solves this riddle of a disappearance from 50 years before, so someone approaches her because she's not a professional, but knowing she did that, to ask Meg to do something similar for her--it's the woman's sister, woman named Sally, who has disappeared. Her sister Maryanne asks Meg if she would try to find her. So it just kind of all fit together that way.
Matty: Did you have to do any research for the current day story?
Jane: That's a ride-around. Always go down and see what's new in Ventnor, check out the libraries and see what's back--like the fishing pier comes and goes with storms. Actually, I don't think it's completely gone since ’62, but making sure that things are where they used to be, that my memory is correct.
But a lot of it's done by reading plaques on the boardwalk. That's what makes it really easy. You can walk up and down the boardwalk and read plaques. I like to put in little things like that. There are benches on the boardwalk, but I just can't mention that, somebody has to need a bench.
It's the usual of going down, finding the post office--What time does the mail come in? What days did they open? It's that kind of thing. Just anything you would do for a current scene and that's more drive-around than anything else.
Matty: I know that people will be interested in finding out where they can get Ventnor City when it's out, I'm not sure that this is going to be before or after this podcast goes live, but it's January 14th, 2020, I believe. Is that right?
Jane: Right .
Matty: And where would people go to find that and to find out other information about you in general online?
Jane: For me, they can go to Janekelly.net or they can go on Facebook to Jane Kelly Author. I put very little on Instagram, but I do put book notices up at JaneKellyTrinity. And then, at Pinterest, JaneKelly80 has the background.
Since this is for authors, I will mention that I would have had an easier time, I could have just said it'll be available wherever books are sold, but my publisher uses Baker and Taylor as their distributor and Baker and Taylor stopped doing retail distribution. They still do libraries, and my publisher does a lot of work with them with libraries, but I don't know who will be distributing it to bookstores. At this point, I'm just trying to find bookstores that I know would be interested in having it, and my publisher does the same, but it makes it a little tricky.
That's one of those vagaries of the publishing world that authors should be aware of. This is the second time a distributor has gone away. After one of the first books I wrote maybe Long Beach Island, there had been a New Jersey Distributor who went out of business or closed his business for some reason. So it is a business and it's tricky.
Matty: Yeah. It's a business that's changing all the time as every month in the publishing world proves. And I guess that the change at Baker and Taylor just leaves Ingram as the main big name distributor of print copy books to bookstores.
Jane: A lot of independent authors use Ingram, don't they?
Matty: Yes. IngramSpark is the outlet for independent authors, which ties into the Ingram catalog, so indie authors who want to get their books available in a way that's appealing for bookstores to acquire would put them up on Ingram.
Jane: Because my publisher still uses Baker and Taylor for libraries, and this is just one imprint that they have--they do a lot of professional publishing, which doesn't really go into bookstores--I don't know if they're willing to change. So I really don't know what's going to happen.
Matty: It will be an interesting topic to check back in on over the months to see how that evolves because you hope that the publishers who had exclusively been using Baker and Taylor won't hold their authors hostage not being able to get to the bookstores.
Jane: Yeah. I don't know what's going to happen. I know there's some bookstores like Sun Rose in Ocean City, people can always go there and get it. Cloak and Dagger in Princeton, maybe they will cover it, but that's two bookstores that I know of and it used to be in so many, so I'll have to find out.
Matty: I guess it just takes more personal work by both the publisher and the author. When those kinds of changes happen and you have to step up to filling the gap, that otherwise would have been a more seamless process.
Jane: I know my publisher's working on it. He updates me. He's great that way, but no results yet, so I don't have anything to tell you yet about what's happening.
Matty: As time goes on, let me know if there are changes to where people should go for your books. I can post that in the comments of the podcast so that people can find you even in the future.
Jane: They're always available online through Barnes and Noble and Amazon and Kobo. So, yeah, there's online venues, but don't know so much about going in and picking up and looking at it. I have to find out about that.
Matty: Congratulations on the launch of yet another book, Jane, and thank you so much for sharing your information about writing in time and research. I think it's going to be helpful background to the listeners.
Jane: Thank you very much. Thanks for the invitation. It's been fun.
Matty: It has been.
