Jeanette Anderson may be new to novels (I reviewed her first novel here), but not new to writing. The best of her blogs share a little something about her life. Here she discusses growing up in poverty near Snake River. She expands on that with a couple of personal anecdotes here, including this description of a UFO sighting:
Unbelievable to us, our eyes took in the image of a slowly moving saucer-shaped object, with red, green and white lights blinking around the perimeter. It moved directly over our heads toward the church, and I was sure it was too low to clear the steeply pitched roof. Much to my surprise, it did not hit the building but glided over it and disappeared. We scattered and shouted the news to the boys who meandered around in the side lot. They yelled and jumped on their motorcycles and peeled into the vacant field behind the church property to see if the saucer had landed there. They returned disappointed. There was no sign of a flying saucer.
In her bio for a book-review blog, she wrote about this experience on a mountain road:
Years ago, I was steering down the steep, windy lane from the Sundance Ski Resort when my heart began to pound. The car behind me had closed the gap between us on the mountainside. Maybe he was a psychopath who would drive me off the road, attack and stab me to death. Maybe I was being chased by my handsome lover who had begged me not to leave him, was aching to hold me in his arms and wouldn’t let me go. Maybe it was both. My hands froze on the steering wheel when at the T-junction the suspicious driver pulled up beside me. When he turned in the opposite direction, and the chase was over, I decided it was time. As an accomplished and published ghost writer with over twenty-five years of experience, my subconscious was calling me to enter the world of fiction.
These demonstrate the power of Anderson's creativity
and ability to enthrall with literary thrills. Though some might suggest
a measure of credulity, you'll also notice the skepticism that also
governs the imagination--that it is fiction that propels us forward.
Just as she navigates the Charybdis and Scylla of politics, she threads
narrative creativity as a skilled pilot, testing her readers'
imagination with wild aplomb.
- - -
How did you get started writing?
My mother read literature to us as kids around the kitchen table, and I was fascinated how the words could make her cry and give me goose bumps. I picked up a pen and began journaling as a young teenager and still journal to this day. I must have a dozen volumes now.
Have you mined those journals to write new works? Or are they workshops in craft? Or just personal records?
I used journaling to hone those emotional expressions and clarify life’s experiences which as you know is a huge part of storytelling, to get all that emotion onto the page and into the heart of the reader.
Who were some of your favorite writers back then? now?
I loved Nancy Drew Mysteries growing up. Now I enjoy the mysteries of Mary Higgins Clark and the romance of Nicolas Sparks.
What was the origin of the novel?
It was quite unexpected, really. I met a Palestinian woman on Shepherds Hill just outside of Bethlehem who thanked me for being willing to write a story of her people and their struggle. I felt embarrassed as I reflected on her words because I realized I was not even close to describing the conflict of that war-zone. I traveled home and changed my story. Instead of trying to avoid the conflict I put my protagonist into the center of it.
[The Palestinian woman and I] sat together and talked about the despair she had experienced; the bus searches and beatings, the laws prohibiting her from ever seeing her birthplace, Jerusalem. How in her desire to worship on the Sabbath she’d snuck through a hole in the security fence to reach the Mount of Olives and been shot at by soldiers. It was chilling.
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