So... It's been nearly 2 years since Charles and I announced our intent to eventually move to the Low Lands. And occasionally I get an email, or PM, or even phone call, asking how that plan is coming along. Have we forgotten? Was it just something said to placate Joop, our first exchange student? Plans take a while, folks. But the short answer is, yes we are still planning on moving over there, but expatriating with no job offer, or potential spouse waiting for us, is hard. We don't plan on attending school, I am a writer, not someone who works for a multinational corporation, and my husband is a handy man and military vet. And we aren't rolling in dough, so the process is slow and incredibly tedious. But, I have exciting news, the first step to us moving to the Netherlands starts this spring! I will be travelling to the country to promote my latest book, and my first memoir, Joop Does America, which is about my journey with Joop. Or Joop's journey with me. It's a small step, but it's the first one. The timetable for the actual move is probably 10 years out. Charles is trying to finish school, we need to pay off some student loans, figure out a plan for our house, file all the correct papers, find a new home, and save enough. Sometime next year, we will take a family trip over to the country of my ancestors as the continued step. If you want to help support me, Joop, or our book, you can start out early by checking out our GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/4k5jy-joop-does-america-the-book or following our page on facebook: www.facebook.com/joopdoesamerica
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I never quite feel validated as a writer by society, especially as a female. I guess it started out about 4 years ago when I wanted to buy a house. My income for ghostwriting had been over $1,000 a month for almost 18 months at that time, and was continuing to rise. But no one would give me a mortgage because I didn’t have a *real* job.
They could only base the mortgage off my husband’s income. It took another 18 months, more than $2000 a month in income, and a brother that was an insider in the real estate community before the reality of homeownership was within our grasp. I even had a degree in the field that I was working in. Great credit. Married to a veteran. (I could go on why I was an ideal candidate.) Recently, house troubles aside, I had two different instances that made me pretty mad. And then a fellow female writer friend of mine posted something in our writer’s group about also having validation problems, and people assuming that she was a kept woman. And dang, this woman makes enough money to buy a fancy SUV cash after just two months of saving. Currently that would take me about 2 decades… So, here I am, on the internet, attempting to validate my career. Here are the two instances that made me mad: My husband and I are trying to get life insurance. We assumed as real adults now with a kid, we should have some basic term insurance. We are asking for twice as much for me and the company found that suspicious. So they called and asked why I would need more than my husband and I said because I make about 4 times as much as him. It should have stopped right there. In fact, if she just looked at our incomes, she could have seen that and not need to ask the question in the first place. But, she pressed further and I said, “Well, he’d have to hire a maid too.” I said that half joking. But she said “Oh, so you need more because he’ll need more help with the kids and the house.” No ma’am. He’ll need more if I die because I make more than him. But on the application it still says for hiring extra domestic help. I may be a woman that works from home, but I work. The second was with someone that I live with and has seen me work for two months. He should have known better. Joop! Recently I was in a business meeting where Joop was with me and he stopped the meeting and said, “Whoa, you’re really serious about this writing thing.” I said, “It’s how we pay the bills.” And he responded by saying, “I just assumed that your husband paid the bills and writing was just your hobby.” And I just wanted to slap him. But, now, some of the things he’s been saying in hindsight make sense. He keeps telling me I do too much. He seemed especially perturbed when I announced that I was hiring a maid. “Why not just do less?” he asked. If writing was just my hobby and I was having a hard time keeping up with my domestic duties, then perhaps I should write a little less. Even then, I have known plenty of men who have failed spectacularly at being a small business owners, but no one ever questioned the legitimacy of their jobs and wondered why they needed domestic help. And that also brings up the question of how much money makes you legit. Have you made it as a writer when, like my friend, you can afford an Escalade? Or like me with enough to pay basic lower middle class bills. How about my friend that makes about $100 a month? Is she any less legit than someone working at McDonald’s or a part time babysitter? Domestic duties are shared with my husband. Folks, my husband basically works for the health insurance and to pay my taxes. After all that, he has a little discretionary spending and we have money for gas. Am I not allowed to make more than my husband? Is it so unheard of for writers, or those in the publishing industry, to make any money that people automatically assume that I have a hobby and my husband has a job? Or is it just that people assume woman can’t make money? Or jobs that women hold aren’t as important. Frankly, I assume that it’s all of it. And it’s time to stop this thinking. If someone tells you they’re a writer, especially female writers, please assume that it is their *real* job. Because it is their real job. And, please for the love of women, quit assuming that women need a man to support them. * I would like to note that my husband’s contributions are quite vital. He works for a university and gets cheap group health insurance, which would cost an arm and a leg otherwise. But all that aside, my husband’s worth is not determined by how much money he makes, his net worth, or even his job. He’s a human being, not a human doing. I promised way back that I would give a primer on Djinn vs. Genie, and here it is. I know in the western world we think of Genies living in lamps or bottles and granting us wishes. The two most enduring symbols in Western Culture are Disney’sAladdin and the 1960’s TV show, I Dream of Jeannie.
Don’t get me wrong, I love these shows. They are hilarious and mostly family friendly. Though, you may want to have a talk about feminism and female empowerment with your children after watching I Dream of Jeannie. Or informing your children that Arabic women aren’t half naked, slightly tanned white girls. But, I digress. The Genie actually comes from the French, not the Arabic. The French were originally highly active in the Middle East during the Enlightenment, and the Book1001 Arabian Nights captured their attention. And rightfully so. The collection of stories is truly amazing. But the Frenchman who originally translated the work in the 18th century mistook the Arabic Jinn, or singular Jinni, to be the Roman Genii, or singular Genius. The Roman Genius was similar to Djinn in that it was a spirit that could have many forms and was often bound to a human. And mainly, it had a similar sounding name. That’s about the end of the similarities. The Genii were more like guardian angels and the Djinn were more like strange fire cousins to us humans that enjoyed a good prank. Sometimes a Djinn would be bound to a particular person, but it was never considered a good idea. Djinn, much like humans, don’t enjoy being enslaved and have quite a nasty trickster side to them. Djinn would be more kin to Puck and his ilk in the British Isles than to guardian angels. Alas, the comparison and name stuck in our western minds. And forever these “hidden brothers” to the human race became some sort of silly guardian wish granter for good little humans who were lucky enough to find one. Previously, finding a Djinn, was not considered lucky. Mostly, if you left a djinn alone, they left you alone. There are some exceptions to this of course. Djinn have many races that range from purely evil to quite nice on a grand scale. And in each race of Djinn, there are the exceptions. But that’s a post for another day. Stay tuned for the next installment later this week, where I’ll go over how I use Djinn in my books. Hey, it worked for God!
Let me tell you a story about my first book: Until a month ago, it was a tragedy. Jazrael and I have been together for nearly 2 decades. She’s had a couple of names, and the city that she’s lived in has gone through a couple of names too, but she’s always been the same person in that same city. I started writing Phoenix Rising in high school. The early drafts are pretentious and horrible, but hey, you gotta start somewhere right? For those of you that are not writers, you have no idea the agony of starting a book, especially your first book. You think it has to be perfect, so you write and throw it out. You write and tweak. You try a different angle. It wasn’t till after college that it came to me how I was supposed to write that first damned chapter. I was working as a market researcher – it’s different than a telemarketer, but yes, I still called you during dinner – and I had hours where I just sat on my hands in front of the computer screen. Facebook was just beginning to take off at this point, and I didn’t have too much of an interest. So here’s the deal, my favorite book of the Bible is Genesis, specifically the first 11 chapters. It’s a world building book. Literally. It tells how the world, according to Christians and Jews, was made. Fascinating stuff really. And there is tons of fantasy related things in it too. Demons sleeping with humans and creating super humans. Talking snakes that walk. A lady being made from a rib bone. A giant, world destroying flood. But, the first chapter held my interest the most. I loved how the book told the story of creation day by day. It was poetic, literary, beautiful, and very, very fantasy like. So I decided to copy it. It was golden. Beautiful. Literary. And a big huge flop. It’s the chapter I originally published. I could not get anyone to review it because the first chapter. Too slow, poetic, and literary I kept hearing. I’m sure it’s also what drove the agents mad too. I don’t blame them; I was trying to sell a commercial, teen fantasy book to them and it started out with literary, biblical verse. So, I took the book off line, hired myself a publicist, and rewrote the first chapter. And guess what, reviewers are lining up. People, the right people, get sucked in and can’t put the book down. I’ve learned an important lesson in writing from this experience. There was nothing wrong with my chapter before. It just wasn’t the best first chapter for Phoenix Rising. I forgot who my audience was and fell in love with my lovely words, the perfect imagery, the illusions to the Bible, and nearly tanked my book. My name is Jeannie...and yes, I write about genies
I often get asked about my name. “Did you pick it because you write about genie?” So, I’m going to answer it once and for all here. The short answer is NO. The long answer is much more complicated. It started before I was born when pretty much every female in my family since before time, okay, at least until my great, great grandmother on several sides, was given the female name for John. Since I’m an American, my family came from all over the place, so the form ranged from Johanna to Jeanne. My parents were rather sensible, as were my grandmother’s parents, and gave me the middle name of Jean, like my grandmother. She was Mary Jean and I was Sarah Jean. Sometime in college, my grandmother started going my Jeannie. The main reason was that Mary was the most popular name of her generation. Also at the time, she worked for a lady cleaning her house. This lady referred to my grandmother as her magic Jeannie. This was also about to be the time of the show “I Dream of Jeannie.” Then I come along. I’ve always been fascinated by Middle Eastern fantasy. It wasn’t something you saw too much. Just in Disney’s Aladdin or in a book of fairytales that had some stuff about genies. So I made up my own stories in my head. Grandma Jeannie was always fond of those stories. Still, no one called me Jeannie. I would also like to note here, that I don’t generally write about genies. I write about Djinn, mkay? We’ll cover that in another post. Cause there is an important distinction. So, when did I decide to start going by Jeannie? And why? In college, just like my grandmother. And because there were too many Sarah’s, just like my grandmother. I was in a class of 7 people and 3 of us were Sarah. It was a journalism class that required us to have a byline, so the teacher pointed at me and asked what byline I would like other than Sarah. Jeannie. I sounded like my grandmother as I said it. It was in print. It was final. People started talking about Jeannie and her articles. And before the end of my freshman year, 75% of the campus knew me as only Jeannie. By the time I graduated, I don’t think anyone knew my name was Sarah. Now that my grandmother has passed away I feel even more of a need to carry on with the Jeannie name. She’d be proud. She’d also be proud of my writing. While I know that she won’t be physically there for my book launch on Sunday, I know she’ll be there in spirit. Phoenix Rising, my first book, is dedicated to both my Grandma Jeannie and My Grandma Gladys. Both of them died over a year ago. Gladys read it herself, while I read Phoenix Rising to Grandma Jeannie while in hospice. She got to hear the ending. |
AuthorI live in Athens, Georgia, with my son, my husband, and an ever-revolving list of exchange students, who are a never-ending source of entertainment and writing material. Archives
June 2019
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