It took me days to animate this image. I’ve done a few others and I bet you can find them. Because they are not me. Also on the borders of this blog I have some ai writing. The little box footer explaining my goals was ai generated. You can tell if you read it as I am not that classy of a writer! I’m pretty casual. So where I can control it…I use my own words. For now, my photos are not available to me. If they were I’d use my own book covers.
“A Paris Notebook” is the first book cover designed by The Wild Rose Press. And they still design my covers to this day. I’ve had other cover art designed for my indie books. At first people on Twitter were very easy to attract. Everyone wanted to help out. I’m not sure it’s that way anymore. I had a wonderful cover artist for “Sisters Issues” published by Woodward Press. A random guy sent me the cover for “Gypsy” I really liked it. “Sweet Melissa” (follow up to Gypsy) is either a watercolor painted by a friend or a picture of me at age 20 taken by my boyfriend. I really want to work on “Sweet Melissa” to make it readable for my tween grandkids.
I loved that Paris Notebook cover and the story. “Sarah’s Survival Guide” is a novella that originally appeared in the book. My editor at the time thought giving Sarah so much ink took away from the main characters, so I cut it, fixed it up a little bit, and put it on Kindle. Every book I mention here is an indie, except “The Paris Notebook.” Main character is a teacher, like I was when I wrote it. I based the Jack character on a friend who taught in the classroom next to mine. He loved showing episodes of the Simpsons. Everyone in my class listened hard to his class.
I was married with children when I wrote that book (to Al, as I was for all my books and still am). So the only true parts of Paris Notebook are teacher business: grading, checking papers, chatting in the office I shared. Even though I taught college, I was not a professor, except in the most vague sense of the word. I had a M.A. in English, not a PhD. I had a family, even had a day job (teaching adults). My days were so scheduled, I had very little free time. But I had energy, even for my own homework. I justified it that I was still writing (college papers, which are non-fiction and require supporting arguments). It was a different kind of writing, but it was still writing. And researching. I enjoyed it almost as much as making stuff up.
Grad school is so fun as you get to choose from a selection in your chosen field. I remember writing my master’s thesis. Fifty pages on “Female Friendships in Victorian Literature.” My favorite professor belonged to the Jane Austen Society. This was in the ’80s. Jane was still kind of a secret except to English majors. My son and I discussed the reasons why we didn’t go for our PhDs. Money was huge. As in, I needed to make it, not spend it. Mike moved to California for his second degree and he paid for it himself. I’d gotten scholarships and grants and things for my undergrad but grad school came out of the family budget.
The other thing was Mike evolved. He always wanted a PhD to this point. He just thought it was cool. I did too, but I did not want to do an oral exam in front of a bunch of scholars. I was that shy of public speaking. That and plus I didn’t need it for the job I sought. Part-time teaching college. Which is what “The Paris Notebook” was about. My main character, Deena, also wrote a book on teaching. She taught at two schools. She got caught up in the politics of teaching, like who got paid on the first tier and who was paid as an adjunct. I was the former. That’s how it was already going. I tried to get a full-time job.
I even planned to teach high school, but in my district not one single English teacher was hired. For seven years. They even built a new school that remained vacant until I finished my master’s and went on to teach college. I liked it better. At the time I was bummed but really it was a special gift from the stars. Teaching high school English would have sapped my soul. Doing the college-teaching thing part-time meant I was basically my own boss, I made my own schedule. And I made less money.
I never cared about money, not really. Everything was different when I was young. Life was less expensive. I worked at the Chinese restaurant and could cover my rent, clothes, groceries and a car. An old junker of a car…but it ran (most of the time).
When I met him, Al cared enough about financials for both of us and he was happy to cover my insurance. He worked for the autos. They paid well. He could afford me, but then I’d never wanted much. Having come from little, I was used to scraping by. True I was married to my boys’ dad for seven years and he also worked for the autos. But he was white collar, Al was blue. For a long time, Al had a uniform at work and it was blue. With a collar. My ex wore a suit. Tie and everything. I wore uniforms at my waitress jobs but then when I became a teacher I had to dress the part. I wore dresses and good slacks and tops until I started teaching college.
Then I wore jeans. Mom jeans. Boots. Comfortable but adult shirts. Pretty soon Al rose to a job where he wore jeans and shirts, too. And had his own office. I never expected that. We were blue collar people and proud of it. We were in unions. I love my pension, although at the time I really didn’t want to keep teaching. It was a small pension. But I’d paid my dues. Al thought I should collect on all those years with low pay and little respect. I only had a year or two left. It felt like eternity, but I did it. For Al. He supported me when I needed him and so I had to step up when I could and do the right thing.
I’ve never thought about it, but I believe I wrote at least rough drafts of most of my books while still teaching. I know for sure I wrote “The Paris Notebook” about my teaching years. And Deena’s struggles are a lot like my own. Except I never had an ex who was a rock star.
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