Uncategorized – Page 3 – Kathleen Jones, The Quirky Novelist

Booklife’s Rave Review of The War On Sarah Morris!

Booklife, Publishers Weekly, February 26, 2024, page 89: https://www.digitalpw.com/digitalpw/20240226/MobilePagedReplica.action?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TXPUB0240224002&utm_content=gtxcel&pm=2&folio=88#pg90

In this tense, funny novel, Sarah Morris, a 49-year-old editor, faces upheaval at the publishing company, Quill Pen Press, where she’s worked for the past 21 years. Though there is no change in her job title or pay, all of her job responsibilities are now different and she is forced to do overtime without pay for new daily tasks that she hates. With a recession ravaging hopes of economic stability, and finding herself her family’s sole income-earner following her husband’s dismissal from his banking job, Sarah must decide what steps she needs to take in her career to find her way back to being happy in the workplace. Does she dare a job search, as she puts it, “In middle age. In a crappy job market … that’s hostile to older people like me”?

Sarah exemplifies the emotional turmoil many feel when facing discontent in the workplace as Jones delves into self-doubt, the fear of starting over, and being complacent in a dead-end job. With wit, snark, and a striking sense of all-too-real realism, Jones writes a relatable and personable narrative about being pigeon-holed and feeling stuck with work that is no longer fulfilling or providing the space or opportunity for advancement. Exploring toxic work cultures, micromanagers, and workplace favoritism, The War on Sarah Morris is punchy and pained, outraged and comic, offering much that readers—especially women working in troubled industries—will find resonant. While set in 2011, the novel feels pointedly of the moment.

Jones convincingly captures the inner workings of a publisher and the ever-increasing responsibilities that fall onto lower level staffers, plus the indignities of a job search, from “biographical resumes” to pop-quiz writing assignments in job interviews. In this, Jones blends the engagingly dishy with sharp-elbowed analysis of power dynamics. Readers who have ever worked under tyrannical managers or for companies who only care about how much money is coming in will be impacted and feel a personal connection to Sarah’s struggle.

Takeaway: Sharp-elbowed novel of a woman facing a job hunt after 20 years in publishing.

Comparable Titles: Lisa Owens’s Not Working, Liz Talley’s Adulting.

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

The War on Sarah Morris will be released on April 11, 2024 by Legacy Book Press. Available in trade paperback and ebook from Amazon, Ingram Book Company, Indigo Books and Music, and Barnes & Noble. For more information, please visit the Media Room at site: https://kathleenjones.org/

New 5-Star Review for Love Is the Punch Line

Reviewed by Susan Sommers on Goodreads, October 21, 2023

What a wonderful ride through the world of stand-up comedy and the romance of Holly and Josh. Kathleen Jones tells the story with strength, romance, and compassion. The characters become lovable and human in her expert hands. Bravo!

New Love Is the Punch Line Review!

Reviewed by RJ on Amazon.uk on May 7, 2023: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Punch-Line-Kathleen-Jones/dp/1738882705/ref=monarch_sidesheetEnjoyable

Enjoyable

4 Stars

Funny and endearing. This book grabbed me from the start. Strong, believable characters. I’d recommend it.

The Perfect Spring Fling!

Author Kathleen Jones will be signing copies of her novel Love Is the Punch Line at:

IndigoSpirit: First Canadian Place, 100 King Street West (King and Bay), Toronto
When: Wednesday, May 24, 2023, 12:00 noon to 2:30 p.m.

You’ve Finished Your Novel. Now What?

By Kathleen Jones, The Quirky Novelist. Please sign up for free updates at ‪http://eepurl.com/ceSobT

You’ve finally finished writing the third or fourth or seventh draft of your novel. You’re ready to show it to another pair of eyes—beta readers or a freelance editor—but you’re exhausted. You need to take a break first. But should you?

Of course you should! Novel writing is a demanding task that requires hours of intense focus and discipline. So set your manuscript aside for at least one month and don’t pass it on to anyone else right away.

But don’t let that one- or two- or four-month break go to waste! Use that time to plan the future of your novel. How? By creating the following files in Word:

a schedule for your novel that lists all necessary tasks, along with their proposed timelines;
a marketing plan for your book;
a list of potential agents; include links to their webpages, contact information, and submission requirements;
a list of publishers in your genre who accept unagented manuscripts; include links to their webpages, contact information, and submission requirements;
a list of reviewers (both publications that review books and online book bloggers) who might be interested in your book; include links to their webpages and contact information; and
promotional materials for your book, such as a tagline, a brief synopsis, and a long synopsis.

Why should you bother doing these tasks now? After all, you’re trying to relax!

Two reasons:

It will be easier to keep your book’s momentum going after you’ve worked through all of the comments from your beta readers and/or freelance editor and made changes to your manuscript because you’ll know what you have to do next. And you won’t have to spend weeks and weeks compiling all of these lists from scratch; you’ll only need to spend a few days checking the information online for updates.
It will also be easier to keep track of all of the tasks you’ll need to do and when you’ll need to do them.

In other words, organizing yourself during a slow period when you’re taking a break from writing will make the process of getting your novel out into the world a lot smoother, less stressful, and less overwhelming. And it will free up your time for a task you truly love: Writing your next novel!

Visit Kathleen Jones, The Quirky Novelist, online at https://kathleenjones.org/ or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/joneslepidas and sign up for free updates at ‪http://eepurl.com/ceSobT Kathleen’s first novel, Love Is the Punch Line, a midlife romance set in the world of stand-up comedy, is available NOW, in trade paperback and ebook from Amazon.com (https://www.amazon.com/Love-Punch-Line-Kathleen-Jones-ebook/dp/B07BYNX7BM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1525812415&sr=1-1&keywords=love+is+the+punch+line) and Indigo Books and Music (https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/love-is-the-punch-line/9781945181337-item.html?ikwid=love+is+the+punch+line&ikwsec=Home&ikwidx=0) Visit the Love Is the Punch Line Media Room at https://kathleenjones.org/media-room/

THE PERFECT HOLIDAY GIFT!

#BookGiveaway #RomanceNovel #AmazonGiftCard.

I’m giving away 1 copy of my ebook #LoveIsthePunchLine and a $25 Amazon gift card. All you have to do is like and retweet for your chance to win. I’ll be contacting the winner on 12/15/21. CANADIAN AND U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY.

I Miss My Characters!

I Miss My Characters!

By Kathleen Jones, The Quirky Novelist. Please sign up for free updates at ‪http://eepurl.com/ceSobT

I spent over three years of my life with two special people, Josh and Holly. I knew how they met, how their relationship grew, how they felt about each other. I knew their strengths and weaknesses, their likes and dislikes, their checkered pasts, their worries about the future.

I knew everything there was to know about these two people. Then one day . . . they were gone.

Josh and Holly were the main characters in my first novel Love Is the Punch Line. Even when I wasn’t writing, they lived in my head. I could see them and hear them so well that they became part of my daily life. So when I finished writing the book, I found myself missing them.

How did I deal with it? I started writing a new novel with a new set of characters I could befriend. But I still miss Josh and Holly. Maybe I should write a sequel . . . .

Saving My Bag

Neal3K Handle With Care via photopin (license)

A series of posts by a Toronto-based novelist who’s trying to reduce her carbon footprint by making more thoughtful choices in her daily life.

By Kathleen Jones, The Quirky Novelist. Please sign up for free updates at ‪http://eepurl.com/ceSobT

I’ve always loved leopard prints; among other things, I’ve owned a leopard print dress, pants, shirt, blouse, sweater . . . even a belt. So when I spied a large brown leather shoulder bag with a haircalf, leopard print front on Banana Republic’s website in the fall of 2011—the bag was part of the store’s 1960’s-themed Mad Men Collection—I just had to purchase one.

I took very good care of that bag, keeping it clean and treating the leather with a special conditioner several times per year to keep it soft and supple. Unfortunately, I discovered that haircalf is very difficult to take care of. The haircalf front of my bag became more and more bald with each passing year, and by the fall of 2019, it looked awful. I was ready to buy a replacement . . . but I didn’t.

Why? For one thing, haircalf bags cost a fortune. Also, the rest of my bag—the leather—was still in decent shape. It seemed wasteful to toss it out, and I didn’t want to hurt the environment. I knew that nobody would purchase my damaged bag if I donated it to a resale store and that it would end up in a landfill.

So I started hunting for a shop that would either dye the bald spots on the haircalf to conceal them or replace the front of the bag with a new piece of haircalf.

None of the shops I approached were willing to take on the dye job. One shop was willing to replace the haircalf panel . . . at a cost that was far higher than the price of a brand new haircalf bag! I was about to give up and buy a new bag . . . then I had an idea: Maybe I could replace the damaged haircalf front with a piece of plain leather.

The owner of the shoe repair shop in my local mall offered to take on the job for the reasonable price of $120 (versus $500 and up for a new haircalf bag). He replaced the damaged haircalf front with a piece of reddish-brown leather that contrasted beautifully with the rest of the dark brown bag. Two weeks later, my bag looked like new.

I now have a lovely bag that didn’t cost a fortune and is much easier to take care of than the old version of the bag. And my contribution to the world’s landfills was minimal: a panel of damaged haircalf instead of an entire bag.

Sympathy for the Villain

By Kathleen Jones, The Quirky Novelist. Please sign up for free updates at ‪http://eepurl.com/ceSobT

Photo credit: License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/”>(license)<

Ever since I was a child, I’ve sympathized with the villains in stories.

It all began during my earliest years, when I sided with the “villainous” cats in those all-too-common cat and mouse cartoons that used to run on Saturday morning TV. Even though Tom or Katnip had been trying to catch—and presumably, eat—the mouse, he didn’t seem to deserve the cruel and brutal torture that was supposed to be “funny”, but never was.

As I grew older, I found myself feeling sorry for villains in novels, movies, and TV shows. All too often, I became angry when a male character was humiliated in public or a woman was jilted by her fiancé for a more beautiful woman or someone’s job or career was destroyed when a more “deserving” person snatched it away from them.

Whenever I talked about my sympathy for these “villains,” most people thought I was crazy. After all, the villain had done something to deserve his or her fate! And I was supposed to cheer for the hero!

But I wasn’t crazy; I had very good reasons to cheer for the villains.

In most of these stories, the villains are losers. They’re underdogs who never had any realistic chance of winning. And they’re almost always outclassed in some way by the heroes—the winners—who have some unfair advantage over them, be it looks, some special talent, or even good, old-fashioned “virtue.” Heroes are nothing like real, flawed people with shortcomings, who usually don’t have outstanding looks or talents. And real people don’t always win.

In other words, real people are more like the villains than the heroes in stories. Unlike heroes, real people know how painful it is to lose. We’re often outclassed in some way by those who have some unfair advantage. That’s why I—and perhaps other people—sympathize with villains, not with heroes.

And also like us, all of those fictional villains probably have a good side and deserve their fair share of happiness! Why can’t their creators—novelists, scriptwriters, animators—find someone to love the villains or give them a shot at a promising career . . . or even let those cartoon cats catch those stupid mice, just for once?

China, Not Paper!

3530666753_e58458cdf3_b

Photo credit: i_aint_got_no_id jmartin_earth_apple via photopin (license)

A series of posts by a Toronto-based novelist who’s trying to reduce her carbon footprint by making more thoughtful choices in her daily life.

By Kathleen Jones, The Quirky Novelist. Please sign up for free updates at ‪http://eepurl.com/ceSobT

For over thirty years, one of my favourite Boxing Day rituals was a trip to the mall to snap up bargains. And every year, I’d visit card stores, where I would purchase next year’s cards, paper, tags, and bows, all at half price. All too often, I’d also pick up small paper plates printed with festive holiday images, such as vibrant red poinsettias and big white and silver snowflakes.

These cheerful paper plates added colour to our Christmas table, and I loved seeing them year after year. But after dinner was over, these now-soiled, unrecyclable plated were always tossed out. A couple of years ago, I began to wonder what happened to these plates after I threw them out. Did they end up in a landfill somewhere?

Deep down inside, I knew the answer: I was creating waste. And I had to stop. But what alternative did I really have? Good-quality, Christmas-themed china plates aren’t exactly cheap, and a whole set of them would cost a fortune.

But I didn’t need to purchase an entire set; a partial set of dessert plates would do. In January 2020, I spied a set of six small Lenox china appetizer plates (which could be used to serve desserts on) with a pretty green holly pattern on sale at Hudson’s Bay for $112 (marked down from $250). I snapped them up. I wanted to buy six more plates, but they were sold out at the Bay, so I searched online. I finally found them on sale at Wayfair for the higher but still reasonable price of $180.

I now own a set of twelve gorgeous, holiday-themed china plates that will last for years and years, purchased at a fraction of the original price (over $500). And, most importantly, I’ve stopped buying—and tossing—those pretty paper holiday plates that are easy on the wallet but hard on the environment.