Literary Escapism: What We're Writing by Jenn McKinlay

JENN McKINLAY: I'm not going to candy coat it: Covid kicked my butt. January was a migraine and fatigue infused cocktail of yuck. So, February found me in a bottleneck of work that had me putting in sixteen hour days with breaks only to run the dogs and cry (not a lot but a little, for sure). 

I thought by March, I'd be out of the soup. I am not. The rough draft of my next rom com novella, The Attraction Distraction (out June 2022), was finished a couple of days ago and is off to the editor. The rough draft of Fatal Fascinator (dropping Jan 2023) would be complete, but I changed the method of murder and the murderer (WHY? I DON'T KNOW - IT'S JUST BETTER THIS WAY). And the revisions for my women's fiction Summer Reading (June 2023) had to get put on the back burner because both of the first drafts are coming out before Summer Reading, oh, and I just received the copyedits for The Plot and the Pendulum (Oct 2022). 

I feel like I'm doing manuscript triage. "Medic! I need a word Medic!" Why is there no such thing? 

Anyway, my brain is flatlining because I have gone from a literary quest with an academic on an uninhabited island in the Aegean Sea (The Attraction Distraction)...

To a murder mystery with a milliner and friends tripping over bodies, multiple, in a castle in Sussex, England (Fatal Fascinator)...
 

And I'll finish out (please, God) back on Martha's Vineyard with a dyslexic heroine and hot guy librarian women's fiction.

See? Literary jet lag - it's a thing.

Because I just finished the draft, here's the opener of The Attraction Distraction, so that you can get packed to come to Greece with me. It'll be fun, I swear. Also, here's an early peek at a bit of the cover! Yay! 

Chapter One 

    “Sarah, what’s your vaccination status?” 

    My head snapped up from the facsimile of a Mycenaean clay tablet on my desk. Claire Macintosh, the director of the Museum of Literature, was standing in the doorway to my office. She looked spectacular, as always, in a Viking warrior sort of way. She had strong chiseled features and was tall, very tall—like supermodel tall—but with robust curves and a head of shoulder length thick blond hair that made her look like a 1940’s pinup model. 

    “Vaccinations? Why?” I asked. 

    “We need you to acquire a piece for the collection but it’s going to require you to travel to a remote location,” she said. 

    “Oh.” I perked up. I loved to travel. The more exotic the better. 

    “I’d go but I have to attend that horrible fundraiser weekend that my mother is insisting upon,” Claire said. She looked peeved. 

    Claire’s family was loaded. She lived in a penthouse apartment on Park Avenue and it wasn’t from the salary she made here at the museum. But Claire had just turned forty and her mother, Hildy Macintosh, had made it her mission to marry her daughter off and have grand babies within the year. I’m not gossiping. Hildy literally told every person she met that this was her agenda and then asked if they knew a nice man for her daughter. Claire simply rolled her eyes and then stepped over the men that her mother threw at her feet. I’d seen it happen. It was painful to watch, actually. 

    “Is she going to try and marry you off again?” I asked. 

    Claire cringed. “Undoubtedly.” 

    When she was thirty-five, Claire became the youngest person ever appointed director of the Museum of Literature. Housed in a Georgian Revival mansion on the upper east side of Manhattan, along museum mile, it was formerly the private residence of industrialist Thomas Stewart and his beloved wife Mabel. An avid reader and book lover, Mabel Stewart had bequeathed the property to a private foundation with specific instructions to create the Museum of Literature. 

    The director was a highly coveted position, and Claire had to prove herself time and again to the very exacting museum board. I knew if she was sending me in her stead to acquire a piece for the collection then the stakes were high and failure was not an option.

                      ***

JENN: I've been getting a lot of questions about why I'm writing these ebook novellas (the short answer is spite and for more on that, click here) but along the way my motivation changed. 

The response to the first novella in the Museum of Literature romcom series, Royal Valentine, which took us to a fancy estate in Bath with a nod to Jane Austen, was so incredibly warm and supportive, I was thrilled! And it occurred to me that I was writing these short bursts of fun escapism because I needed them. I needed to wallow in Jane Austen in Bath, just like I needed to run away to an uninhabited island in the Aegean Sea and engulf myself in Ancient Greek myths and legends and all that Greek god lore. Frankly, the book nerd in me just wanted to go on a geeked out literary adventure, and amazingly thousands of readers did, too. The third novella It Happened One Christmas Eve will come out in December and then next year in 2023, all three novellas will be printed in an omnibus for those who do not like ebooks.

Will there be more after that? Yes! The ideas area already percolating, and I can't wait!

So, Reds and Readers, if you could go on a literary adventure anywhere in the world, where would you go?