Jenny Gardiner: Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

Title: Sleeping with Ward Cleaver
Author: Jenny Gardiner
Mass Market Paperback: 294 pages
Publisher: Love Spell
ISBN: 978-0505527479

1. First off, congratulations on the big novel sale! Give us the elevator pitch. What’s your book about?

Thank you so much! And thanks for having me visit.

SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER is the funny yet poignant story of a woman at a crossroads in life, who years earlier married a man who swept her off her feet, but now finds that her Mr. Right has evolved into Mr. Always Right, and the only sweeping going on in her life involves a broom and a dustpan. As her dreams collide with reality and the one that got away shows up trying to worm his way back into her heart, she must decide if her once charmed marriage is salvageable, and if so, how she’s going to go about saving it.

A fun, sassy read!  A cross between Erma Bombeck and Candace Bushnell, reading Jenny Gardiner is like sinking your teeth into a big frosted chocolate cupcake…you just want more.
-New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot

2. Most new novelists have an interesting story to tell about their journey to publication. What’s yours? Did you use an agent? Make sure to tell us about the day you found out you’d sold a book.

I had a most unusual path to publication. Two springs ago, I heard on some  online writing loops that there was a contest being sponsored by a publishing house and they were looking for humorous women’s fiction. I knew nothing about it but that it was called American Title III and was modeled after American Idol. Even when I Googled it, I got very little information. Nevertheless I found out the address to which I had to send my partial, did so, and promptly forgot about it. Several weeks later I received a letter in the mail requesting the full manuscript, which I sent, and promptly forgot about it. A few months later, I found out I was one of ten finalists for the contest, which was co-sponsored by Dorchester Publishing, and the prize was a publishing contract.

Now writers often know that entering contests is one way to expedite having an editor or agent look at your work, so I was just happy I’d gotten this far. But to be in the contest was pretty surprising. What I then learned as I fumbled along in the contest was that ultimately it was a marketing contest, and I learned quite readily how to get my name out there and market the hell out of the book. It was really quite a nice situation, because in this business authors often feel as if they have very little control over much of the process, but this gave me the sense that I could control things to a certain extent–provided I really hustled and marketed the book (which wasn’t in print of course!) and got the name out there.

The contest ran for six months, with two contestants being eliminated each month, and to my great surprise I was the winner.

The day I found out I kept playing phone tag with the person who was calling to tell me. I live sort of out in the sticks with minimal cell phone coverage, and she kept calling my cell phone and I couldn’t get the message. So it wasn’t till I went out into town that I finally found out I won.

At the time I did not have an agent, however that did help me to get one!

The wonderful thing about the contest is I laid the groundwork for the publicity for the book which was really helpful. I was in the contest before writing contests started to become ubiquitous, and so there was great enthusiasm on the part of friends, family and even strangers to help each month to vote for me and spread the word to others as well.

I’m sure this helped greatly with my launch, and the book met with fabulous reviews and debuted at #32 on the Barnes & Noble mass market list, thank goodness.

The best thing about it all has been getting amazing letters from readers who loved the book and really related to it. My book especially appeals to women–I joke that anyone who’s been in a relationship with a man for more than ten minutes will “get” this book. So I’ve had a lot of really enthusiastic emails from women who tell me how on-target I portrayed their own lives. One woman asked me to remove the probe from her brain and the cameras from her living room because clearly I know everything going on in her life!

3. Do you have another book in the pipeline? What are you working on now?

The good news is I have about six books written and in various states of revision. My agent has my novel MARY KATE GOES OVER THE FALLS out on submission, so we’re waiting to hear about that. It’s the story of a woman trapped in an abusive marriage who goes out to pick up her husband’s dry cleaning and instead picks up a handsome hitchhiker, the lure of whom reminds her of the lip of Niagara Falls, said to tempt people to jump in. They embark on a road trip of self-discovery, en route to the Falls, where she plans to take the plunge.

4. What’s your writing process like? Morning writer, night writer, or something in between?

Any time I can cram in quiet writing time I do so. Since my book debuted I’ve had to spend far more time on marketing and publicity, so I am craving writing time. But with 3 teens with very busy schedules, I fit it in whenever and wherever–even if that means carting my laptop to soccer practice, in the car en route to sports events, etc.

5. There seems to be an unusually high percentage of writers who own cats. Here at the The First Book, we’re doing a study to find out if there’s a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership. Do you own a cat? If so, tell us about him or her. If not, tell us what you have against cats.

We’ve got a menagerie! A fabulous cat named Sushi–she’s and orange tabby and has a charming disposition. She’s taken to being a writing kitty with me and curls up next to my laptop. Lately she’s been walking across the keys at inconvenient times, and also nudging my hand to pet her and also licking my fingers. This does make it a little hard to get writing done.

Prior to Sushi we had two cats who lived very long lives–one lived to about 20 and the other to 23–we lost both of them in the past couple of years. In addition we have two dogs and a parrot, so even when my kids aren’t home the pets are making lots of noise and distracting me from work!