Jane Isenberg - Readings, Interviews and Conferences

The back story. . . .
If you have not yet read a Bel Barrett Mystery, enjoy. There’s lots of info on this site about each of the 8 full-length books and the one novella as well as about how the series came to be. But if you are among those fans of Bel’s who are eager for more of her adventures, you will be disappointed to learn that Hot Wired is Bel’s swan song.

When I learned about a year ago that HarperCollins was not renewing my contract, I was neither surprised nor devastated. I had done the math and knew that Bel was facing retirement. And although writing about Bel had been satisfying in many, many ways for over a decade, I was ready to focus on another project.

Since beginning the The “M” Word in 1993, I myself have retired from teaching to write full-time. I’ve also moved four times (I can pack a kitchen in my sleep), been bat mitzvahed, gotten married, become a mother-in-law, and become a grandmother 3 times. I’ve even become post-menopausal! The Bel Barrett Mystery Series features a menopausal protagonist doing work I knew very well in Hoboken, New Jersey, a place I had lived in for over twenty years. Her hot flashes were like my own. But since 2000 when I retired from teaching and moved, most recently and finally, I hope, to Issaquah, Washington, new ideas, characters, and settings have been crowding Bel in my head.

Several of those characters, the corporate auditor, the estates attorney, the ob/gyn and the hooker, do work that I have no experience with in places where I have never lived. For over a year now, I’ve been researching Seattle history, Jewish history, the forensics involved when a skeleton is unearthed, and The Klondike Gold Rush, all fields I knew little about. I began writing last spring, prodded and inspired by my new West Coast writing group, and I’m now on chapter nine. During this transition from series to stand-alone, I applied for and received a Rebound Grant from Mystery Writers of America. This grant was designed to help mystery writers whose contracts have not been renewed create a proposal for a new project. I have used the money to buy books and pay for research-related travel. I continue to speak when invited, but I now spend most of my time writing. I hope to send a manuscript to my agent in the spring.

- COMING EVENTS FOR 2008 -

Wednesday, January 16
Mercer Island (near Seattle), WA
Reading and talk
Jewish Community Center
3801 East Mercer Way
11:00 am

- RADIO AND INTERNET BROADCAST ARCHIVE -

AARP Prime Time Radio (Public Radio broadcast)
http://www.aarp.org/leisure/radio/pt/
Interview by Mike Cuthbert

A FEW SCENES FROM SIGNINGS PAST . . .

Jane with Amherst Book Shop owner Nat Herald

Here I am collapsing on the shoulder of ever-supportive Nat Herald, proprietor of The Amherst (MA) Bookshop. This event was at the tail end of a very quick trip back east in March 2004, and I blew into the store just seconds before the reading was scheduled to start. It was so lovely to see friends from western MA!

Two Janes! A loyal reader from North Carolina (right), also named Jane, was in Manhattan on business. She took off a few hours to cross the river and attend a talk I gave at the Paramus N.J. Public Library on April 27, 2003. Thanks to her we have this photo and the one below.

Here are Phil and I are just before the talk at the Paramus Library. This turned out to be a family reunion as well when my sister-in-law Shirley (right) and her sister Dorothy arrived.

On April 8, 2003, I spoke at a dinner given to benefit the University of Massachusetts W.E.B DuBois Library. It was held at Stockbridge House, the University Faculty Club, a charming building that dates back to 1728 and is the oldest building still standing in Amherst.

At Kate's Mystery Books, Cambridge, MA, March 27, 1999.

Jane at Malice XIII

Malice Domestic XIII (2001), May 4 panel Lethal Lessons in Academia. Left to right -- B. B. Jordan, Frankie Y. Bailey, Marlis Day, Jane Isenberg, Mary Ellen Hughes. I'm the one with her brastrap showing!

Big sister Jordan sizes up her new brother Levi. She's 2 1/2 years old now and is getting used to having him around.

Baby Lucas smiles happily a few days after surprising everybody by arriving in the back seat of his parents’ Toyota while en route to the birthing center. His mom, Shilyh Warren, delivered him herself, while his dad, Daniel Isenberg, sped through red lights and finally accepted the resulting police escort. If I put this story in a book, no one would believe it!

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