A Visit with Jan Christiansen

     New Jersey native Jan Christensen lives and writes in Texas. Sara's Search was her first novel and she's  published more than fifty short stories over the last dozen years, two of them Derringer Award nominees. She's also written nonfiction articles and has a column about reading in the ezine, Mysterical-e.

  Jan, why is a Jersey girl living in southern Texas?

When you marry a military man, you never know where you’ll land. Fort Hood, Texas, was my husband’s last duty station before he retired, so we stuck around. We’ve moved three times in Texas since Fort Hood—to Amarillo, to Arlington (between Fort Worth and Dallas), and now Corpus Christi. We also motorhomed fulltime for eleven years before settling in Corpus. The Gulf of Mexico is a few minutes away, the weather is probably the best in Texas both summer and winter, and the gulf is minutes away—oh, I mentioned that already. Husband is from Rhode Island, I’m from New Jersey. We love the beach, but not the winters up north.

2.     
    Why mysteries? What is it about them that intrigues you?

I’ve always read more mysteries than anything else, but my first manuscript was mainstream. I decided it needed something to drive the story better, and putting in a murder seemed like a good idea. It still seems like a good idea, but the book will never be published unless I find the time for a huge overhaul. After that experience and the one with Sara’s Search, my only published novel, I’ve pretty much stuck to mysteries.

3.      
    Tell us about Sara’s Search?

Glad to: Sara Putnam has spent the last two years searching for her biological father, Howard. When she finds him murdered, she has even more questions. As she starts her own investigation, she meets Howard's eccentric, co-inventor partner, his ex-wife and their son who calls his mother "the bank," plus an assorted cast of suspects. She also has to deal with her adopted mother's roadblocks, her crazy roommate's problems, sexual harassment at work and her best friend's strange illness. Sometimes quirky, sometimes serious, Sara's Search, as one reviewer said, will keep you flipping those pages. And it’s now available on Kindle!

4.      
    What prompted you to write the book?

Again, it didn’t start out as a mystery. I’d been reading Anne Tyler and decided I wanted to write something with very quirky characters. Sara began as mainstream. Most of my critique group members (except one) didn’t “get it,” though, so I changed gears and inserted a murder into Slot B. Slot A contained those weird characters—Sara is about the only sane one

5.      How difficult is it for a short story writer to graduate to a full length novel?

Very. For me, anyway. Obviously, with over fifty short stories published and only
one novel, I’m more comfortable and probably better at writing short stories than novels. I even have a series of short stories coming out from Untreed Reads (a publisher who only publishes in ebook format, thus their name) about a hapless
burglar who gets pulled into difficult situations by a different woman in each story. Would I love to have one of the novel series I’ve written published? You bet! Since NY is not breaking down my door, I’m probably going to go the self-publishing
route, starting with Kindle and other ebook formats and see how it goes.

6.       
    What’s your writing schedule like? Do you aim for a certain amount of pages a day and do you outline your work?

I don’t outline—I get bored when I know what’s going to happen next and don’t want to bother writing it down, I’ve found. When I’m on schedule, I write one thousand words in the morning because I’m both freshest then (ask my husband—he’ll tell you how fresh I can be), and yet not yet bogged down by real life—in other words, I think the dream state is still somewhat with me, so I can put those words down in about an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes. I get that done most mornings, no problem. The trouble begins after that. I’m not very good about editing the work the several times everything, from the shortest piece to the longest, needs, then submitting it, or promoting.  My ideal schedule would continue with an hour’s worth of social networking and writing in my not-yet-live blog in the mornings.  Afternoons are spent doing everything except writing, and after dinner, ideally, would include another two hours of writing chores—an hour of editing, another of submitting work and marketing.
   
   How do you promote your work?

This is tricky. For Sara, I did the usual signings. I hired P.J. Nunn to do some publicity, and her Breakthrough Promotions was a huge help. But I had some bad luck as we traveled around in our motorhome with repair work needed (had to cancel a signing in Florida and dash up to Indiana for repairs), my son donated a kidney to his sister that year (both doing well!) and ankle surgery for me. Now that we’ve stopped traveling and bought a house, and with internet promotion taking off, I’m hoping our lives have settled down enough that I can get it all together—my schedule, and promoting on-line. Actually, today is the start of my life in a house again because there’s very little left to do to get us settled, so I’m starting up on my writing schedule once again.

8.     
     Advice to budding writers?

Write every day—have daily goals. Once a project’s first draft is finished, begin to write something else every day, but also spend some time editing the older project. Once the editing it done, add submitting old projects to your to-do list. Also start getting your name out there on the social networks—email lists that interest you, Facebook, Twitter, Good Reads and so forth. If you think you’d enjoy blogging, begin. Once anything is accepted, let your social network know, and once it’s published, tell the world. But also remember to write and edit every day and submit every finished piece you have done as soon as it is either finished or been rejected. Now, if only I could follow my own advice about the submitting. And a final bit of advice--read every day, both fiction and nonfiction. I read at least three books a week.

   Thanks, Jan. 

You can visit Jan at her website: http://www.janchristensen.com/

Her author’s page on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Jan-christensen/e/B004XTXSYO/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Her  Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=596611147

The Short Mystery Fiction Society where Jan has been moniated twice for a Derringer Awards for short mystery fiction (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Shortmystery/