Featured Author - Jane St. Clair

Most of the time I carry around a sign, “Will Write for Food.”
Actually, I have an Internet business of writing mostly web articles, but I’ve done 54 children’s stories and a dozen children’s books for a Korean publisher. I’ve published two non-fiction books as a ghostwriter, and many ebooks. My favorite was “How to Find a Lost Cat.”

Before my children were born, I was a newspaper reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal and several weeklies. I also worked for “Sesame Street” (TV show) for several years.

My Mom, Dad and sister all died of cancer. When I stayed with them in home hospice, and when I saw how vulnerable they were, I came to believe that dying people need love and caring and meaning, not suicide.

I liked the way the characters took on lives of their own and pulled me, their creator, in certain directions that I did not anticipate. They seemed so real to me, and I grew very fond of them, although not one of them is a perfect person.

I wrote Walk Me to Midnight when my kids were in school and my husband was at work. The thing was -- the murders and horrifying situations seemed so real to me that I got very scared. I locked my doors and windows, kept my dog at my side, jumped at every little noise – I just felt so scared!

Even if you are rejected all the time, you are still improving your craft every time you write. Writing is like dancing, the more you practice, the better you get. Keep dancing and someday you’ll make it to Broadway.

I love the classics like Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Leon Tolstoy, and Anton Chekhov. I also read a lot of biography and non-fiction.

That dying people need our love, care and understanding as they find meaning and reconciliation at the end of their lives. That assisted suicide is ego-centered; it’s about trying to control your own destiny when you really cannot. It is a terrible thing on a personal level, and a disaster for any society that makes it legal. That’s how Hitler started out: killing terminally ill people.

I am working on a novel called How Tess’s Diary Saved Me When I was Alone and Snowbound. It’s about a contemporary pregnant woman who connects with an Edwardian girl through her diary, but the theme is women, birthing, and babies. I don’t think anyone’s done anything quite like it. It’s not as good as I want it to be, but isn’t that the way we writers always feel about our work?

Walk Me to Midnight is a medical thriller that takes a strong stand against assisted suicide. It’s a murder suspense story, starring a psychologist with a call-in radio show. She gets together with a crime writer who’s something like Truman Capote, and together they go after the “doctor of death.” Everyone who has read it said they finished late at night within a day or two because they couldn’t put it down. However, everyone who’s read it so far is a friend of mine.

Edna St. Vincent Millay said, “Being published is like walking around in public with your pants down.” For a shy person like me, it’s excruciating to be noticed at all.