Jennifer Greene: On Supporting Women Through Fiction

Jennifer Greene is the bestselling author of over 85 books, the winner of multiple awards, and an ardent reader herself. She’s written romances, romantic suspense, single titles, novellas, and numerous nonfiction articles. In her books, she’s known for her unforgettable characters, sneaky humor, and the vital women’s issues she loves to explore with her readers.

Jennifer lives in orchard country, near Lake Michigan. She and her two kids raised numerous critters, from Newfoundlands to Australian Shepherds, cats, motherless raccoons and homing pigeons—and pretty much any riffraff breed or wildlife that needed a home. When the kids were growing up, the clan took an aging motor home through the 48 lower states, where she researched most of the settings for her books. Visit her at JenniferGreene.com.

In this post, Jennifer discusses the accident that led to a break from writing and the isolation that led to her return with her new novel, Hideaway at Silver Lake, her hope for readers, and more!

Name: Jennifer Greene
Literary Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency
Book Title: Hideaway at Silver Lake
Publisher: Avon—part of HarperColllins
Release Date: January 28, 2023
Genre/category: Women’s Fiction (I’ve always written books for women, including category, romantic suspense, single titles, and novellas.)
Previous Titles: This is my 88^th book. My complete publishing history is on my website at JenniferGreene.com, including national award winners, bestsellers, and other types of stories.

Elevator Pitch for the Book: Poppy’s been taking care of her sisters since she was 11—only she’s 32 now, and her siblings are just as dependent on her. They’re not the problem, Poppy knows. She is. The Christmas holiday gives her two solid weeks to hide out in the country—a place where she can practice a re-start on her life. Her goal is to remember the carefree joy she felt as a child, to stir back some risk and freedom, and for darn sure, to avoid ANYONE who’ll make demands on her. That’s the goal. But then Sam and his Wolfhound shows up, and nothing works the way she planned.

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I’ve been writing books for almost four decades—until 2016, when a truck barreled into my car at full speed. When I came to, I had a nasty concussion, a heap of broken bones, and both neck and spine surgery ahead of me. It was a long recovery. I’d changed, my life had changed, and I doubted I would ever have the zest or energy to write again.

Unfortunately, the writing addiction is as pernicious as a freckle. You can cover it up, but it’s still there. This vague story idea started playing in my mind and refused to disappear. I tried to ignore it. To be honest, I was afraid of failing. Actually, I was certain I’d fail. Every writer I know has had lots of failures. That’s not relevant to anything. We write because we write. That’s what we love, what we do, a critical part of who we are.

So, I suckered into trying again. Just playing. Not letting myself worry about whether it was going anywhere. My publishing history certain looks like I’m a hard-core romance lover, but that’s not true. I never liked the word “romance”; it always struck me as artificial and contrived. What I love is writing stories to women, for women.

Corny or not, I believe women authors reach women readers in a way no other medium ever has or could. We have traumas and experiences and dreams we can’t share in real life—too risky—but we can find them in books. Women need support. We need affirmation. We need someone to understand exactly what we fear, what we fight for, what we face—and especially what we struggle with.

By the time I started this book, we were midway through the long months of COVID—and the faces on women I saw had changed. Bright smiles had dimmed. Laughter had muted. We hadn’t hugged friends in two years, even those close to us. Everywhere I saw women who looked life-exhausted—from teaching children at home, working at the same time, constantly trying to keep a family happy and having no time for themselves. More than that, I saw loneliness. In all of us. We all thought we could stay at home for a while, and it would be kind of fun? And it WAS. For a while.

I suspect we all had the internet to keep connected, but it wasn’t the same. We didn’t have pals to laugh with, to ask advice from, to share a glass of wine with and just…talk. Over all those COVID months, we’d stopped sharing and even forgot how to reach out the way we used to. We hadn’t spilled anger or sorrow or trauma or silliness with anyone—not really. And that loneliness I saw in women was what ignited this story.

My heroine, Poppy, lost her mom at the age of 11. She took care of her two younger sisters and their father, took on the roles of caretaker and surrogate mom and teacher and protector. She loved her family, but the years kept passing by. She grew up, saw herself and her sisters through school and en route to their adult lives, but she’d never had a minute when she wasn’t ON. Available to the family. Available to all the people who knew she could be counted on. She’d never actually WANTED a life until she realized she’d never had one—a life, that is.

She was smart, had a good job, made great money—but somehow never had time to buy a new lipstick. Get a haircut. Do-over her wardrobe. Do anything—just for herself. Selfishness just never seemed to fit with her temperament. She’d always taken care of others, did the right thing, the responsible thing. She’d never stepped on a crack in the sidewalk.

So, she runs away. Not for long. With her job, the only time she can easily get two weeks off is during Christmas break, but that’s good enough. She just needs some serious alone time—think time—to figure out why everything has gone so wrong in her life. When had she last done something fun? Something just for herself. Or—gasp—invited a man in her life who wasn’t safe?

In Writer Talk, what I wanted to do was throw my very, very good heroine off a cliff.

That’s how Hideaway at Silver Lake came to me—but of course, it wasn’t the story I presented to the reader. Good women characters are boring, and the heroine’s conflict was too close to zillions of real women who feel trapped today. I also learned (decades ago) that serious themes often work the best with a light touch.

So, the ingredients I added to my writing stew included three sisters, three brothers … spaghetti ice cream and snow sundaes … a child with an addiction to purple and spangles … chestnuts roasting on an open fire that blow up. And my editor, imagine, suggested that I add a dog. (For me, that’s like giving candy to a baby. I’ve raised Newfoundlands, Australian Shepherds, mutts, cats, baby raccoons, homing pigeons, rabbits, etc.) But for this story, I added a regal Irish Wolfhound named Bubbles.

And that was how it all came together.

Eeks. Quite a while. I was rusty. Although writing it was like riding a bike—of course you can pick it up again, but you’re going to wobble for a while. To translate that: passive voice and lazy transitions and other writing wincers showed up in the first draft. My initial goal was also a novella, but my agent loved it enough to coax me into expanding it into a full-length book.

Over the decades, I’d worked with some truly stellar editors, and my agent hooked me up with one of my favorites—Lucia Macro—we’d already done 25 books together. She knew me. She knew exactly how to push and coddle and tease me into doing more than I could do. So, the whole process took a couple of years before we were all happy with the book.

And yes, of course the idea changed during the process. A novella and a full-length book are two different worlds. Novellas are tightly written stories, but Real Length books take more richness and conflict and braiding subplots together. There isn’t a simple answer to the heroine’s problem, any more than women have easy answers to their struggles. The word “loneliness” isn’t even mentioned in the book. But the heroine’s hunger to connect, to reach out, are big risks she’s afraid to take. As we all are.

The whole publishing world changed dramatically in the few years I was healing from the accident. Publishing houses had conglomerated. Digital books and markets had exploded. Social media already existed, of course, but now it was a dominating force for the whole industry.

As far as the title itself—I’ve always given editors a title for a book when I send in the manuscript. Possibly they took my title 30 percent of the time. Mostly they came up with titles they felt would sell better. 90 percent of the time, they were right.

If there weren’t surprises, we writers would quit writing. There is no boredom for a writer. We’re either in heaven or hell. Hell includes: characters who refuse to behave, words that won’t come, a plot that completely takes off on you and needing to rewrite because the brilliant path you started with hit a dead end. If the Muse would just BEHAVE, writing would be easy. It never is.

I’ve written for so many years that I’m used to those mental slaps upside the head. Maybe there are writers who get it all perfect the first time. I’ve never met any. You don’t learn to write in school. You learn by writing, and sweating blood, and sweating more blood, and suffering terribly—until you do the slap-upside-the-head thing and figure out what’s wrong.

So, you didn’t want to rewrite. Tough. That’s the work. That’s how we do it. It doesn’t get easier—but it’s also why we never get bored. The characters and story always come to life in ways we never anticipated. That’s good. Not bad. It’s just sometimes frustrating.

When a reader finishes this book, I hope she’s smiling—and that she feels uplifted, as if the story were written for her and personally to her. (Which it was. There’s a bit of every woman I know in “Poppy.”)

I’ve said this more than once in workshops for writers: You can lie to your lover; you can lie to your mother; you can even lie to yourself—but a good writer NEVER lies to her reader.

It matters.

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