Jennifer Niven does it again with ‘Becoming Clementine’

I first heard the name Jennifer Niven back in the early ‘90s, about the time her mother Penelope Niven’s nearly 900-page biography of Carl Sandburg was published.

In a lecture at Carl Sandburg College in Galesburg, Ill., Niven shared a story of her young daughter, growing up with a mother “obsessed with a dead guy” as the elder Niven studied the prairie poet.

I’m not sure if it were the mother’s pride, her storytelling abilities, or her optimism, but I was convinced that day that not only the elder Niven, but the younger one, too, were to leave marks on the literary world. 

My suspicions were correct. 

Today, Sept. 25, is the release date for Jennifer Niven’s latest novel, “Becoming Clementine.” 

Jennifer’s name was splashed across a page – a screen, actually – shortly after her mother’s Sandburg biography was published. The daughter’s first work was an Emmy award-winning screenplay, “Velva Jean Learns to Drive.” 

Jennifer followed that with a non-fiction arctic adventure story, “The Icemaster;” the biography of an Inuit adventurer, “Ada Blackjack;” a memoir of her own high school years in the big hair days of the 1980s, “The Aqua-Net Diaries; “ and two novels, “Velva Jean Learns to Drive” and “Velva Jean Learns to Fly.” 

It seems as if life itself is an adventure for Jennifer, and it shows in her books. A diligent researcher, Niven leaves no pebble unturned, yet gifted storyteller, she knows how to weave a tale without threads that go astray. 

In “Becoming Clementine,” Jennifer continues the story of Velva Jean Hart, the character who endeared herself to us in the first two novels. In the series, the author invited us along with the young girl from the mountains of North Carolina as Velva Jean learned to drive, to sing, to fly a biplane, to serve her country as a pilot. 

The latest novel adds to the adventure in ways most of us would have never expected when we first met the young girl. In a quest for her missing brother, the pilot Velva Jean finds her way to Europe.  Once there, as she enters the field of espionage, it may seem as if we’ll lose our Velva Jean when she becomes Clementine Roux.

Yet, be she Clementine or Velva Jean, the adventurous spirit we grew to love remains ever determined, gutsy and inspirational. Just as she’s done in each of her previous works, Jennifer Niven holds her audience spellbound from the first page to the last and sets the stage for Velva Jean’s next adventure.  

What’s that? 

How does 1940s Hollywood grab you? Guess what Velva Jean wants to be next.

Isn’t Jennifer lucky that she can help make Velva Jean’s dreams – and her own – come true and keep us entertained in the process?

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012  

 (Image via)

What’s it like, writing a book?

Wonder what it’s like to write a book?

You can ask any one of a number of authors and you’ll hear a different answer.

My friends who write historical fiction or fiction set in a specific time period do tons of research to make sure their books are believable. If you want to see how that process works, check out Jennifer Niven’s blog.

Others, like some of my Lincoln author friends, spend years pouring over original source documents in archives across the country, make sure as they’re writing to footnote every single word they’ve plucked from someplace else, and get to do that lovely task of indexing the volume.

Gee, and we wonder why they don’t have time to blog about writing a book.

Some fiction writers, like Richard Paul Evans, also share their writing journeys on social media. If you want to follow the writing process and life as a writer busy with the publicity requirements of the trade, follow Evans on Facebook. He rarely misses a day of posting. And, when he’s working on his Walk series, he uses his blog to share his adventures on the road. For one book, he even solicited dumb jokes from his followers and used some of them in the story.

There are some of us, though, writers of fiction, who just step aside and let our characters tell the story. Richard Bach offers three simple little rules on how to do this in his book, Writer Ferrets: Chasing the Muse. The book is so good that I won’t share the rules here. Please, go discover them yourself.

I can tell you from experience, if you let your characters take your story and run with it, you’ll have a blast and your story will often catch even you off guard.

Try it. Just get out of the way and let the characters write the book for you.

It works.

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012

(Image via)