Being in the public eye means you’re the topic of a certain amount of speculation. Fortunately I\u2019m not nearly famous enough to be stalked by paparazzi or to be profiled in the National Inquirer, but that doesn\u2019t mean there isn\u2019t a certain amount of ugly gossip out there.<\/p>\n
Bill and I met in June of 1985, six months after his first wife died and two and a half years after my first husband\u2019s death. Twenty some years into our marriage, a former employee at a bank branch we utilized back then told a good friend of ours that she didn\u2019t read J.A. Jance books because, when Bill\u2019s wife was dying, I\u2019d come along to be his \u201cside dish.\u201d Excuse me? With a dying wife and three young adult children, the man was working two jobs, trying to keep the bills paid, health insurance in force, and food on the table. When the hell would he have had either the time or the energy for a \u201cside dish?\u201d In addition, Bill is a man of his word, an old fashioned straight-shooter, who wouldn\u2019t have broken his wedding vows (either time!) no matter how many opportunities might have presented themselves. At the same time, I was a single mother with two little kids and a full time job selling life insurance who was spending nights, weekends, and the early morning hours trying to launch a career as a writer. It\u2019s not easy to be a bar hopping, husband stealing side dish when you\u2019re in bed and asleep at 8:30 at night, the moment the kids are in bed. So there\u2019s that.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the still persistent rumor that I don\u2019t really write my books at all. This one surfaced soon after Until Proven Guilty, the first Beaumont book was published. Because the book is written in the first person through a male cop\u2019s point of view, some readers swore up and down that a retired Seattle cop \u201cwrites these books.” As insulting as that may be, it\u2019s also a backhanded compliment of sorts. My publisher had insisted I use my initials as a pen name because they didn\u2019t think male readers would accept a police procedural written by someone named Judith Ann. (Obviously they never noticed that my next door neighbor on shelves in bookstores and libraries, was PD James\u2014short of Phyllis Dorothy\u2014who was forced to use her initials for the same reason two full decades earlier than I did!) But the truth is, back then, the publisher\u2019s marketing people were probably right. In other words, using my initials was a ploy to conceal my \u2026 wait is the term \u201cmy sex\u201d these days or is it \u201cmy gender?\u201d) I forget what current approved terminology applies, but I\u2019m sure you get the picture. In order to make sure the ploy of using JA only worked, there was no author photo or author bio on my early book covers. So the fact that someone assumed the author to be a retired Seattle cop writing under a pseudonym made sense.<\/p>\n
I expected that once my photo started appearing on my books, that the Seattle cop rumor would go away. Nope! It\u2019s still around. Now it goes like this. \u201cA retired Seattle cop writes these books, and she\u2019s just a front for him.\u201d And you know what? As long as people are reading and enjoying my books, I don\u2019t care what they think. They could call me a one-eyed, one-eared flying purple people eater, and it wouldn\u2019t be any skin off my nose. (Boy, the songs we know really do date us!)<\/p>\n
But this week a new rumor popped up, one that, as my mother would have said, really \u201cgarred my greet.\u201d By the way, I just tried googling that phrase and came up empty, but when Evie Busk said those words, there could be no doubt about what was happening. It meant she wasn\u2019t happy, and when Evie wasn\u2019t happy, nobody was happy.\u201d And I\u2019m not happy right now, either.<\/p>\n
This newly surfaced rumor would have you believe that I have a ghost writer. Grrr! This is one hundred percent false, and if you don\u2019t believe me, all you have to do is look at my computer keyboard. Bill was rehabbing one of my old computers this week to pass along to someone else. \u201cOf course the letters are worn off all the keys,\u201d he said, \u201cespecially the J.\u201d I remember a hunt-and-peck son, recently home from college, who was trying to use my computer to create a resum\u00e9. \u201cHow can you use this?\u201d he demanded. \u201cAll the letters are missing.\u201d I don\u2019t believe a properly installed ghost writer would be wearing the letters off my keyboards.<\/p>\n
I know writing teams who can create books together with one person doing the plotting and the outline and the other person filling in the actual scenes and dialogue. That is SO not me! A few years ago I co-wrote a novella for Thrillerfest\u2019s fund raiser book project, Matchup. For me it was an incredibly challenging assignment. I\u2019m no good on committees. I flunked out of PTA very early on, because fire-fights over Roberts Rules of Order drove me nuts. And during my years in the life insurance business, agency meetings sent me over the edge. At the end of each meeting, there was invariably one guy\u2014I can see him now, clear as day\u2014who would ask an amazingly dim question proving to everyone in the room that he hadn\u2019t been listening to a word that was said. I always wanted to wring his scrawny neck. So with that kind of bad vibe group-grope history, is it any wonder that I\u2019m self-employed and working alone in my family room?<\/p>\n
Yes, I\u2019m aware that there are ghost writers out there. I could name names, but I won\u2019t. In some cases, the families of deceased writers have licensed someone to carry on someone\u2019s literary legacy in hopes of carrying on his or her literary income as well. One young adult writer, V.C. Andrews, who died in the mid-eighties, continued to have books published decades after her death. I\u2019m not privy to what went on there. Perhaps she had drawers full of written but unpublished manuscripts, or perhaps the subsequent books were written by someone else on her behalf. And I know there are living authors whose names pop up month after month with new books who clearly acknowledge that they utilize the services of co-writers. God love them, but that\u2019s just not me.<\/p>\n
I do not use co-writers or ghost writers. I publish two books a year and fifty-two blogs. All of them are written by me, on my keyboard, with my own ten fingers. I answer each and every one of the e-mails sent to me\u2014again with my own fingers. I don\u2019t have someone sorting the e-mails for me. No, I read them all myself and respond myself. There are times when dealing with particularly snarky e-mails\u2014e-mals as I like to call them\u2014that I end up having to grit my teeth while typing my reply, but reply I do.<\/p>\n
For years one of my favorite poems has been Robert Graves\u2019s, A Traveler\u2019s Curse After Misdirection. I just now googled it and have discovered that I\u2019ve been misquoting it for decades. I\u2019m going to give you my somewhat shortened version:<\/p>\n
With every step he takes
\nA bone should break,
\nAnd may it not, for variations sake
\nNow and arm and now a leg
\nBut each and every time his neck.<\/p>\n
So the next time someone tells you with a perfectly straight face that J.A. Jance has a ghost writer working for her, please do me a favor. You don\u2019t need to break the guy\u2019s neck, but do clean his clock, and let him know that he doesn\u2019t have the foggiest idea what he\u2019s talking about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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