MamaWriters are thrilled to have author Jenny Gardiner with us today!  She won the American Title III contest, run by Romantic Times and Dorchester, and they published her winning book, SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER.

You can visit Jenny at http://www.jennygardiner.net/

Help us welcome Jenny as we ply her with questions!

KK: How old are your kids, and how many do you have?
JG: I’ve got 3 teens—oldest in college, two in high school

KK: Do you write when your kids are at home?   What challenges present themselves?  How do you handle them?  What do you wish you’d done differently?
JG: My desk is smack in the middle of everything in our house. So it’s not very easy to concentrate on writing when people are milling about. I don’t really have a quiet place in the house, really, so if I have to have total quiet from distracting noises I will go to a coffee shop or else I’ll put on my iTunes and crank the music up enough to block out background sounds.

Of course even when the kids aren’t here I’ve got little beastie friends who are causing havoc: 2 dogs, a cat and a parrot. One dog barks all the time, one dog wants to be petted all the time (or lick me, and she has horrid breath since she loves to eat deer poop outside), the cat loves to snuggle up on top of my keyboard (and you hate to turn down such overt affection!) and the parrot does anything and everything to cause me grief at times, making loud distracting noises with the metal bars of the cage, just to get attention, or shredding mounds of paper, or throwing her food so the dogs then chase after it and then eat the bird poop, so then I have to stop everything and go over and clean up the mess before it gets worse…Yeah, the good news is between kids and pets, I am conditioned to deal with a multitude of distractions and keep on keepin’ on

KK: Was there ever a moment you ‘knew’ you couldn’t do, be a mom and a writer.  A personal Black Moment, one you moved past.  Has that moment(s) resurfaced?  Is it the kind of thing that revisits?  What do you do about it?

JG: Black moments as a writer…We all have had and continue to have them. There’s no insurance against failure and assurance for success, so writers have to dig down into their own personal reserves of “I’ll show them!” sometimes just to keep plugging on. My kids have been hugely supportive of my writing so they’ve never gotten in the way at all. I guess it helps that I wasn’t writing when they were really little—I only started writing fiction maybe 4 or 5 years ago.

KK. Are you /  were you ever a stay-at-home writing mom?  If so, have you ever been the recipient of the attitude of, “Well, you’re home anyhow, can’t just clean the house/do the laundry/scrub the bathrooms/ drop the dry cleaning off/etc etc”   (As if you’re not doing those things anyhow!)

JG: I’ve been enormously fortunate to have been afforded the chance to be a stay-at-home-mom and stay-at-home writer. Yeah, that position is often sort of in jeopardy, pending money coming in from what I’ve written. There are times when I’ve had more freelance money coming in than now. I often have to ponder, “Hmm…do I have to go find a day job again?”
Which is hard as one who has been home with kids for their whole lives, because I am pretty devalued in the marketplace, having not been in it since 1990. Besides which who’s hiring in this market?!  But I figure if I do have to go get another job to sustain my writing, I’ll probably go back to waitressing, which I did when I was in college, because the tips are good, the hours would work better for me, etc.
Oh, and as the stay-at-home mom who is a writer, yes, the writing is viewed as ancillary and others expect it to take a back seat to other priorities.

KK: Have you ever had any interesting conversations with your kid(s) about your writing?  Your covers?

JG: My kids are hugely supportive of my writing but also don’t have any huge desire to be in the thick of it. They know what’s going on, what I have on submission, who my agent is, who my editor is, etc. They know the details because we all share our lives on a daily basis.
And yeah, the title SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER is sorta embarrassing to a kid—even though they really don’t know the deets of the book nor do they want to. (and no, none of them have read it, though some of their friends have, which makes them cringe!)

KK: What’s one thing being a published author has taught you, that you can use in your parenting too?  Or vice versa?

JG: Something I have gleaned from publishing applicable to parenting? Or vice versa. Well as a mom I have adhered strictly to the “pick your battles” thing. I think that holds one in good stead in all aspects of life. I really hate conflict so whether it’s with kids or whatever, I prefer to be pretty agreeable.

Also I believe in “riding the horse in the direction it’s galloping.” In publishing that’s essential—if you get your panties in a wad over how things are or aren’t going, you’ll just be giving yourself agita—who needs it? Just hunker down and do what you can do, control only what you can control, and then hope for the best!

KK: What’s your favorite “I’m on a roll-or-on-a-deadline” dinner plan? (Any problems with this (with kids or hubby or in-laws, etc)?

JG: LOL re: the “I’m on a roll” dinner plan.

My family has had to put up with my dinners being later and later. Part of that is because the kids are older and I’m picking them up later from practices, etc. But I don’t even begin to think about what’s for dinner till 6:30 at the earliest. This makes my husband crazy. I tell him we’re just dining Continental-style so pretend we’re in Europe. He doesn’t appreciate that LOL. On uber-deadline? They’re all on their own (which isn’t easy b/c no one eats the same meal around here)

KK: If you overheard your kids talking to their friends (accidentally, of course), what would you like to hear them say about you?

JG: I think my kids would have pretty positive things to say. I not only love my kids, but I also really like them. They’re a lot of fun, we all love to laugh and have fun. I’d choose to spend time with people like them if they weren’t mine.

KK: Okay, let’s end with this–  True or False:  Dreams do come true?  What makes you say that?
JG: Dreams do come true. Absolutely. They require a lot of work. Lots and lots of blood, sweat and tears, to be ultra cliché about it. I think we make our dreams a reality. A lot of writer friends say it requires TPT: talent, persistence and timing. I think the persistence factor is really the most important, frankly.

Thanks so much for coming by and playing with us, Jenny!

Check out Jenny’s website, and her book, SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER, which you can buy at Amazon or support your local indie books store and buy though Indiebound.