Big Annoucement

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien

Hiya,

Welcome to my newsletter. I am excited to announce that What He Didn’t See is now available. This is a short novel, a novella, which can be read as a stand-alone or in conjunction with the Close Enough to Kill series full length novels. As many of you know, I fell in love with Jacob Temple while I was writing Circle of Trust and Circle of Truth. This story is written through Jacob’s eyes: his voice, his story.

Here is a 5-star review from Readers’ Favorite:

It's interesting to select a book and find that you're getting what you expected and a bit more. It was the genre that drew me to What He Didn't See by Jacqueline Simon Gunn. As this book is classified as romance/suspense, I was curious about how much suspense would be in a romantic story based on the hope of renewing a relationship after nearly 2 decades of the lovers being apart. That's where What He Didn't See starts: Jacob is a psychologist who hosts a phone-in radio show. When his frequent weekly caller begins to sound very much like Jane, the only woman he ever truly loved but didn't marry, his own unhappiness in a loveless marriage takes over his psyche: he has to find Jane and, if this caller is his long lost love, then he needs to get out of his marriage and grab what might be his last chance at happiness. Herein lies both the romantic and one of the suspenseful angles: will Jacob succeed? Complicating his decision is his manipulative, rich and gay wife, Fiona, who doesn't love him but can't let him divorce her if she is to inherit the family fortune. But the bigger issue for Jacob is the one that caused him to lose Jane 19 years earlier: Jacob is too worried about being a good son and doing what his father expects of him i.e. good Catholics don't divorce.

It is this aspect of parental control, of children doing what is expected of them rather than what they want to do, that is the "more" I referred to in my opening sentence. What He Didn't See is very much an exploration of family relationships, of the expectations, the conflicts, the unreasonable demands parents put on their offspring, and how these demands can mess up people's lives in later years. Given the author's background - Jacqueline Simon Gunn is a clinical psychologist - her portrayal of the characters, their motivations, and the events in this story have an authentic base: Jacob, Jane, and Fiona are believable and what each does in this short, easy to read novel is realistic. Summing up, readers of suspenseful romance get more than expected from What He Didn't See. What readers may or may not themselves see coming is the ending.
- Readers' Favorite

Here is the book’s synopsis:

One reckless night nineteen years ago, Jacob Temple made a mistake that would alter the course of his life.

Caught between the chokehold of his conservative upbringing and the freedom of following his heart’s desire, Jacob was posed with a no-win scenario: Choose Jane — his soul mate and the only woman he would ever love — and be shunned, or marry Fiona to satisfy a deep-seated moral obligation.

After nearly two decades of suffering through a loveless marriage with Fiona, Jacob begins to suspect that Beth, a regular caller to his radio psychology show, is actually Jane. Hoping for a second chance with the woman he never stopped loving, Jacob devises a plan to leave his wife.

But… Fiona has kept him on a tight leash these many years, and her powerful family could ruin Jacob’s life. She will not make it easy for him to leave.

And Fiona is the type of woman someone could die over — or kill over.

Circle of Trust fan favorite Jacob Temple shares his side of the dark love story between Jane Light and himself in What He Didn’t See. This novella provides no spoilers and can be read in conjunction with the Close Enough to Kill series or as a stand-alone.

The Kindle version is only $0.99 and the print version, $6.95. Need an inexpensive Christmas and/or Chanukah gift? *wink, wink*

I am also giving away three print copies. Winners will be chosen randomly from the newsletter list, so if you are receiving this letter, you are automatically entered to win. I will notify winners next week, Dec. 7th 2016.

Circle of Truth, book three in the full novel series, will be available in early 2017, so stayed tuned. Many questions will finally be answered, I promise.

Please share on social media or with anyone who you think may be interested. Amazon and Goodreads reviews are always appreciated, too. They don’t have to be more than a few sentences. Your opinion(s) matter.

Thank you all for your interest and support. Please always feel free to contact me with questions and comments. More books are in the works. Transitioning from writing non-fiction books to writing fiction has indubitably been (and continues to be) the most challenging endeavor I have ever embarked upon. I couldn’t do this without your support. Thank you!

Happy Holidays!

Warm wishes,

Jacquie

Notes from My Mother

Yesterday. The day started out ordinary. Most days are ordinary, I’ve come to learn. Extraordinary living comes from seeing the miraculous in everyday life. It took me a long time to realize this. I used to wait impatiently, going from one experience to another, searching for extraordinary moments, when I was younger. This was a mistake. Of course, there were some amazing things that I experienced along that younger-self-journey. But between the spaces of time, while going through the daily routine, I missed out on the small things. As it turns out, the small things are actually the biggest and most important of all.

So, I was going through a pile of crap, cleaning out one of those drawers that we all have: the ones where we toss stuff when we don’t know what else to do with it. Yeah, well… I have three of those. I like to keep things. I call these “just in case drawers.” I had some new things to put into the “just in case drawers.” So, I needed to get rid of some of the old and make room for the new.    

Finally, I get close to empting the drawer; I can actually see the bottom. Yippee. This was no small accomplishment; there was a lot to go through. Anyway, right near the end, I see it: The Envelope. And just like that, my eyes well, my nose burns, and then the tears stream down my cheeks. This is no ordinary envelope. This holds my mother’s poetry. Some of you know that my mother was a writer. She never got to write the book she had promised to write; the loss of her possibility to do what she had always intended makes me so sad. But I do have her poetry, and it's not typed. These are words written by her hand, in her elegant and curvy letters. I open The Envelope and read her words – both heartbreaking and soothing.  

It is so strange how an empty space can take up so much room. The loss, the emptiness, it’s greater than anything around me. When I let myself feel it, deeply – the loss, it overwhelms me. I also learned so much from losing her; in many ways it's changed me. This is not easy to reconcile. How can I gain anything from the greatest loss I have ever endured? It doesn’t make any rationale sense, and yet, it makes total sense emotionally; it is my lived experience.

Having endured the loss, while also surviving it, made me stronger. Somehow this strength made her life lessons clearer. My mother was a very wise woman. It breaks my heart to think that she is not here to know that I am a better person for having been her daughter, and that much of what I have learned about life, she taught me. 

Underneath The Envelope is a piece I wrote a couple of years ago, but was never published. Along with a long narrative and some poetry, there’s a list of things I’ve learned from her. So here it is: lesson learned, notes from my mother.  

Don’t let others’ judgments stop you from being who you are. You’ll never make everyone happy.

Don’t waste precious time worrying; things have a way of working themselves out. And worrying certainly won’t make them work out any faster – or better.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. Most of what we sweat is pretty small when compared with losing someone we love.

Speak your mind, but if you speak too loudly no one will listen.

Always treat people with kindness and compassionate, but don’t allow people to mistreat you.

Doing nothing is often better and speaks louder than doing something. And you will always feel better about yourself and be stronger for it.

Spend too much money on an expensive vacation – occasionally. You deserve it.

Live fearlessly (within reason).

Love wholeheartedly. Love so much you look and feel foolish.

Try something you’re afraid of at least once a year.

Be joyful in the present. It really is a choice. Much of how we feel is dependent on the way we see the world and experience ourselves in our world.   

Don’t ruminate. It’s good to contemplate, but ruminations are useless and a waste of time.

 Never be arrogant; it’s not a redeeming quality.

Treasure your old friends; they knew you when you acted childishly and they still love you. But always open your heart to new friends, too.

Believe in yourself.

Don’t compare yourself to others. Everyone has struggles. No one is immune to challenges in life. Be grateful, not hateful.

And… never take anyone for granted, especially the people closest to you.

Running For Courage

"If you train your mind for running, everything else will be easy.” Written by marathoner and writer Amby Burfoot, this wise and pithy quote captures the essence of an important lesson that most runners learn: Running teaches us how to live better. Running doesn’t simply burn off stress. Although running does help with that, more importantly, running teaches us courage. Life is filled with adversity. On a most fundamental level, running helps us find our true strength, reminding us over and over that we have the power to persevere in the face of trials and tribulations of everyday life.

I have written a lot about running, a short book, blog posts, both on my own blog and as a guest blogger, a few articles for wellness websites. I could write (and talk) about running ad infinitum. Reason being, running for me is not just an activity, it’s a way of life – the way I live. I am a runner no matter what I’m doing. At the most basic level of my sense of self, I am a runner. Not simply because I run, but more because I know the importance of courage and will and endurance for living.     

When I first started running in college, it was about staying fit, building lean muscle, burning oodles of calories, keeping my heart strong and my mind sharp. The post-run, relaxation was definitely an added bonus. Quickly, running morphed into something else, though, something greater. I wasn’t sure exactly what, but I knew on some basic level, that I was growing from the experience of running. The ability to endure the pain required to run, changed me.

When I was in my twenties and into my thirties, running was very much about competition. Boy, did I love those long runs. I could run for hours and hours, teetering on the threshold of pain, holding a fast pace, I would enter a zone, a place of sheer oneness, then I would push harder. And I loved pushing myself in long and sometimes brutal races.

I learned to run toward the pain, not away from it. There is nothing like that feeling: pushing, your legs like two powerhouses, your cadence a seemingly effortless rhythm in sync with your mind, every emotional pain you ever experienced washed away by your power to endure. A personal thought I often have after a great run: The pain of running relieves the pain of living.

I realize this may sound masochistic to some. In fact, a few times I have been asked if I thought running was a form of masochism. This couldn’t be further from the experience. I don’t run to punishment myself; contrarily, I run because it relieves pain, not because it causes it.

Jason Dias, friend, fellow existentialist and writer wrote, "No drugs here, no manipulation of neurotransmitters that leaves our worldly problems unattended. And no talking cures because explicit insight is not needed. All that is required is courage: the courage to encounter discomfort and stay with it long enough to be changed by it, strengthened." He is referring to running not only as an activity, but as a metaphor – a way to live.

True courage is being able to act and sustain in the face of fear, pain, adversity. If we try to avoid these things, we don’t really live. We may survive year after year in an endless, monotonous cycle, but by attempting to avoid pain, we deprive ourselves of other feelings. We deprive ourselves of experiencing love, joy, beauty, hope. For example, we can never deeply love unless we our courageous enough to risk our heart, knowing full well that at some point it will be broken. And a life without love or hope, a life without moments of joy, is an empty, vacuous life – a life void of meaning.

Running teaches courage on the most basic level, in our body, in our mind. The will and strength to endure in the face of tribulation becomes triumph; running embodies this. Runners know the importance of risk and courage, and the meaning and resilience found when we learn to endure.  

I write this today because the New York City Marathon is this weekend. Running the NYC Marathon is one of my most treasured memories. Of all the races I have ever run, even other full-distance marathons, NY was without a doubt the hardest. In fact, it was one of the hardest things I have ever done, period. I always feel wistful as marathon weekend approaches. This year the longing to run the marathon seems greater than usual.

In my middle thirties, I suffered an injury. It debilitated me for a number of years. I wrote about in it my book In the Long Run. It took me ten doctors, one surgery and a couple years of rehab and a lot of hard work to get back out there. I truly believe the only reason I recovered from the injury and I am able to run again, is because of what I knew as a runner: to face the adversity, push through it, persist and persist, not to give up.

I am grateful to be able to run. I never take it for granted. But running a full-distance marathon is probably not a good idea, anymore. My long runs are usually more like 75-90 minutes, as oppose to 2 ½ - 3 ½ hours and I do most of my running on dirt trails and grass now.

As a runner, I have never been good at accepting physical limitation. And truth is, before the injury, I was constantly pushing my limits and surpassing and surpassing, so it was pretty easy to deny that there were limits, even though I knew that there were. The injury forced me to confront my limit. This was no easy emotional endeavor and it is still something I struggle with. I mean, running is still everything it was before, but now I can’t push myself quite as hard. I’ve had to slow down a bit. It took a long time to accept this.

But maybe every cloud really does have a silver lining. I dunno. Maybe we look for silver linings to make losses more bearable. Or perhaps with every painful loss, if we look hard enough there is something to gain. It no longer matters how fast I am or what place I take in a race or if I even race at all. Only the experience of the run matters. What I garner from running, everyday, year after year, is a mental strength which has made other challenges in my life easier. Running also makes my days better. This is a priceless gift and one that I never, ever take for granted.

“If you train your mind for running, everything else will be easy,” wrote Amby Burfoot. This is the truth. When we battle the demons within ourselves, alone, through our runs, we discover something immeasurable, something beyond race time, split time, something beyond the amazing feeling of crossing finish lines (which is amazing, and should never be diminished); we find endurance. Out there on the road or trail, with every step, every mile, every hill, we discover that everything we need to live is already within us. We discover our courage, our courage to live.

Looking for inspiration or motivation? In celebration of the NYC Marathon, the eBook version of In the Long Run is free this weekend on Amazon.

Writer's Doubt: Getting Out of Our Own Way

I clicked the submit button yesterday. This isn’t much of a novelty. I’m a writer. I write and submit, sometimes short articles, sometimes long articles, sometimes books. Between my freelance work, my blogs, and my books, I usually hit submit at least two times a week. Yesterday it was a book submission.

At first I felt a wave of elation, accomplishment. A passing, you are awesome, Jacquie, floated through my mind. Although only around 4 in the afternoon, I debated calling a friend to go for a celebratory cocktail. Instead, I took a nap.    

About an hour later, I woke up a little cold, hungry and filled with doubt. Staring at the ceiling, a squall of uninvited thoughts entered my mind: Maybe I should have changed this; maybe readers won’t like the ending; is the characterization convincing? Is the plot taut? Is the dialogue fluid?

Aye, Yi, Yi.

Here’s the thing: Every writer I know goes through a similar inner dialogue. When we write, our most authentic self is exposed. We discover things about the way our mind works: ideas we weren’t cognizant of, emotions we didn’t realize. Our fingers type and we sometimes can’t believe what materializes on the computer screen. More than a few times, I have thought “foreign fingers” because my fingers typed thoughts that were so unfamiliar to me.

It’s one thing to write stream-of-consciousness in a journal kept privately. It is entirely different writing for an audience, an audience who we often don’t know and who will be evaluating, whether conscious or unconscious, not only our prose, but our ideas, our most private self – our barest self.

Still staring at the ceiling, another insight surfaces. As much as I want hundreds of thousands of readers to read my work the thought simultaneously, leaves me feeling vulnerable – painfully vulnerable. I don’t know how other writers do it: navigate a world where their work is constantly evaluated by masses and masses of people. Artists, even those with a seemingly strong backbone, are usually sensitive. I know I am. And being sensitive means no matter how hard I try, things affect me.

Every time my work reaches a few more people and a few more people, I get nervous. Excited, too, of course, excited, but equally nervous. Sometimes I want to hide under my bed.

At the same time, I want my work to be read. Whether it’s to share thoughts and ideas as in my non-fiction work, or for my stories to thrill and entertain, as in my fiction, I want readers to read my writing. I want my characters’ voices to be heard and to resonate for people. I don’t necessarily want to be known, but I’d love for my characters to be.

How to reconcile? Hmm…

Navigating the nebulous and almost contradictory writerly path set before me now is very different than the act of writing and completing a manuscript. Many writers I know have a hard time carving the time out to write, the discipline and the sacrifice. Thankfully, this hasn’t been a struggle for me, but the idea of the work being known, that’s a different story.

I’ve written it before (actually it was said by one of my characters), but it’s worth repeating: Sometimes we have to get out of our own way.

So I move myself over and decide that I’ve got to put my big girl panties on. It’s easy to be brave and courageous while sitting behind the computer. Maybe I will always go through this to some degree, or maybe I will develop calluses which will make baring my soul easier. Either way, I’ve never backed down from a personal challenge, so I know I will work this out internally. In the meantime, I guess I will run some extra miles to remind myself that just because I’m vulnerable doesn’t mean I’m not strong, actually it’s the contrary.

Do you have a similar experience? How do you quell the thoughts?