Saturday, December 5, 2009

J.A. Jance in Person

Today I went to the library to hear J.A. Jance, the popular mystery series author, talk about her writing. After seeing her publicity photo on her website, I thought she would be nice and grandmotherly.

Wrong. For instance, she is very tall and is quite imposing standing behind a lectern on a stage. What was most surprising is that she sings at her appearances. She told how her parents and their 7 kids would drive from Arizona back to South Dakota for regular visits with the friends and family they had left behind when the father was advised to move for his health. Their mother liked to sing, so they entertained themselves on those long car trips by harmonizing on a considerable repertoire of songs. She demonstrated a hilariously gruesome country song about heartache, death, and coffins. Then after describing how terrible it was to be a smart 7th grade girl who happened to be 6 feet tall, she told how she eventually became unlikely friends with Janis Ian, who wrote At Seventeen. She closed by singing the entire song, unaccompanied. Brava!

2 comments:

  1. Wow, I would like to meet her one day. Her sister used to babysit me and my brother when my parents went out of town. We are from the Seattle area. I have one her her books on y bookshelf, I still have to read it. She sounds like a character.

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  2. Marla, you'll enjoy your book, whichever one it is. She is a person with a lot of interests and the ability to use all her experiences, good and bad, to inform her writing. Hope you get a chance to see her in person yourself!

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