Today's guest: Jennifer Coburn
Why we love her: Her sassy Chick Lit novels make us LOL!
Her latest: Tales from the Crib & The Wife of Reilly
The scoop on Tales from the Crib: Talk about bad timing! When Lucy Klein gets her positive pregnancy results, she’s overjoyed. She and her husband Jack have been trying to get pregnant for years throughout their rocky marriage. But before she can tell him the big news, Jack has something he needs to announce – he wants a divorce! Rather than split up, Lucy and Jack decide to live together as friends. This way, they can share expenses and parenting responsibilities. Co-parenting is a fine deal for Jack who is back in the dating scene by Lucy’s third trimester of pregnancy, but is a frustrating one for Lucy who has unfulfilled sexual fantasies about every man from restaurant delivery boys to puppeteers. Meanwhile, Lucy’s mother is taking over her life. The grand dame of Planet Earth, Anjoli frequently visits her daughter to share her own brand of maternal wisdom. As Anjoli leaves her Drama Queen bookstore to “help” Lucy with baby Adam, the new grandmother has an affair with baby’s pediatrician, hosts two weddings (including cousin Kimmy’s wedding to herself), and constantly frets about which kind of pie to serve guests. With a cast of family and friends from Lucy’s Jewish aunts to Junior League neighbor, Candace, Tales From the Crib is the story of how one baby can bring people together – so they can drive each other nuts!
Our thoughts: Thanks to authors like Jennifer, Chick Lit is alive and kickin'!
Fun Fact: Jennifer has also written The Wife of Reilly -- the story of a woman secretly trying to find a new wife for her soon-to-be ex-husband and it's available for FREE on kindle from March 20-24! Check out Jennifer's video discussing the most frequently asked question about this book.
Giveaway: 5 copies of Tales from the Crib! Just leave a comment and be entered to win. We'll randomly select the winners after 6PM PST on Sunday, March 25
CHICK LIT IS NOT DEAD PRESENTS...JENNIFER COBURN'S 5 THINGS I'D TELL THE TEEN ME
1. Nothing is more attractive than a girl with a full life. I feel really good about the fact that my fourteen-year-old daughter, Katie, has taken my advice on this one, but I wish I could have a do-over and take advantage of all of the wonderful clubs, classes and opportunities I had (for free!) as a teen. First and foremost, life is better when you have a calendar filled with activities that genuinely interest you. But the secondary benefit is that nothing is more attractive than a girl who has a full life regardless of whether or not there’s a boyfriend in the picture.
2 Don’t compare your insides to everyone else’s outsides. This is actually an adage from Alcoholics Anonymous, but I think it applies to all of us, especially in our teen years. That seemingly perfect girl who glides through high school looking like she’s got it all figured out is likely just as nervous as you. I went to a private high school on the upper east side of Manhattan where one student was more loaded than the next. I was there on a scholarship and utterly terrified that the other kids would discover that I was an economic interloper. I kept a low profile and didn’t say much, which I regret. I wish I’d had the confidence to just walk up to people and say, “Hey, good morning.” The reality is that most of the other students were nice people and probably wouldn’t have cared that I came from downtown on a student bus pass. People had too much of their own mishegas (neurosis, drama, the stuff that makes us “mishugana”) to notice mine.
3 Eat everything! I wish I could tell myself that my glorious, fast metabolism will eventually slow down. (I should have eaten more cake!) I was recently in the supermarket and became annoyed that someone was walking so close behind me. It was actually my ass.
4 Before wondering if he likes you – ask yourself if you like him. I have always been a very competitive person. My varsity sport, however, was boys. I got very easily caught up in winning the guy. I was so busy doing back flips to impress boys that I rarely stopped to ask myself whether or not I really wanted him. Most of my boyfriends turned out to be terrific guys, but that was more dumb luck than any foresight on my part.
5 Spend time abroad. When I was in high school, my friend invited me to spend a month with her family in Rome. The idea was inconceivable. I didn’t speak the language. The money was different. So I declined. How silly I was to let fear hold me back. My daughter and I have taken several long trips to Europe and they have been some of the best times of my life. (And I think hers.) We have some amazing memories of sleeping over at the Shakespeare & Company Bookstore in Paris, getting lost in Spain’s Salvador Dali Triangle, and listening to street musicians in Italy. It has really shaped who we are and I wonder why in the world it took me so long to get my passport.
Thanks, Jennifer!
To find out more about the talented Jennifer Coburn, visit her website and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
xoxo,
Liz & Lisa