BookWire - Meet The Author - Brenda Jernigan

"I've known the power of a good story every since the sixth grade when Leslie Horton lost her lunch after I told the group at my lunch table what had gone on at my Granddaddy's hog killing over the weekend. Born in 1957 and raised in the South and the Midwest, I have been from my earliest days an avid reader and storyteller. When my daughter came home a few years ago and announced that she needed a short family story for school, I told her that if you could tell a story in under 20 minutes then you weren't blood kin to us." - Brenda Jernigan

Neela Sakaria: Thank you for joining us Ms. Jernigan. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background in writing?

Brenda Jernigan: I'm the middle child with an older sister and a younger brother and my father is the first generation in his or my mother's siblings to earn a college degree. He is an industrial engineer and we moved frequently for his career. My mom was a homemaker who is an outspoken and strong woman, and both parents always told me that I could do whatever I wanted to. My grandparents were farmers and mill workers, and we were closely tied to them. As long as we were within driving distance, we spent Sunday afternoons with my grandparents, listening to stories of neighbors and family and occasionally cranking out a freezer of homemade ice cream.

Moving to Ridegefield, Connecticut when I almost 13 and then to Skillman, NJ when I was 14, changed that life. It was in New Jersey at the age of 16 that I walked out of my first sermon. It was Mother's Day, my mother was in North Carolina caring for a sick relative and the preacher chose to preach that all young women should pray that God would send them a man that they could be subject to. I just couldn't buy it, especially from a man with a son named Bubba. My parents had no problem with my leaving that Sunday -- it is a family story that is told to this day when people talk about "how Brenda is."

I began writing in my mid-thirties after the onset of fibromyalgia caused me to revamp my life. I'm a single mother of Katherine, 18, and Benjamin, 16. I am a partner at Tompkins Associates, an international consulting, implementation and integration firm, with headquarters in Raleigh. There I am responsible for marketing, publications, and sales. That position, my children, and my writing keep me busy though I try to find time on Sunday afternoons to listen to some family stories. Occasionally, we are even able to crank out a freezer of homemade ice cream!

Neela: Your book, Every Good & Perfect Gift deals with very spiritual issues. Please tell us about your own background in religion and spirituality. How do your own views come to play in the book?

Brenda: I actually have a BA in Religion from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Like many boomers my age, I was raised in the organized church. My parents are people of strong faith, but I majored in religion for two reasons: Agnes Scott College (which I attended as a freshman) instilled in me the need for a liberal arts degree, and my need to try to figure out what I believed about God. (It certainly wasn't because I wanted to be employed when I finished college.) What I found, and it took a long time to find this, was the path of faith begins at the end of academic study.

Please don't think I am opposed to scholarship, I simply was slower to catch on to the concept that faith is not to be explained (though many try and some do it better than others), it is to be experienced. Given that, I try to do the best I can every day. I have a quote taped to my computer monitor that says, "Religion is for those who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is for those who have been to hell and don't want to go back."

I tried very hard to tell the story of the three women, Maggie, Lily, and Naomi in the book, I'm not certain that I could say where my views come into play, but I have talked with many groups over the last five months, what I find is that all sorts of people readily identify with the issues of spirituality that the book raises.

Neela: Can you tell our readers a little bit about Maggie's character? Why did you choose to have your protagonist, who has such a life-changing experience at the beginning of the book, be ten years old?

Brenda: At first appearance, Maggie lives in a house of extremes. Her grandmother is a practical woman and her mother is a free spirit. Maggie navigates the landscape between the two with humor and a keen eye.

Maggie's character was ten when God first appeared to her for several reasons. Children are more readily accepting of the unusual. They don't put up the filters that adults do. If you read a book like The Feminine Face of God, you find women often refer back to a mystical experience they had as a child. After I'd written the opening chapter of the book, I researched the phenomenon of Marian sightings. If you look at those, children are often at the center of the visions.

Brenda: Off and on for about seven years -- there was a period of about two years where I didn't write at all because of fibromyalgia and uncertainty about the story. I decided at the last minute, literally I sent my entry into the Rupert Hughes writing contest and my registration for the Maui Writer's Retreat and Conference by FedEx, to go to Hawaii. I took almost two weeks vacation, promised my children that if I ever sold the book I'd take them to Hawaii, and set out to see if I could get the story back and finish the novel. To this day, I'd be embarrassed to tell anyone the amount of credit card debt I went into to get to Maui. I think if you laid all the macaroni and cheese casseroles that we ate that summer and fall end-to-end, they would have reached to Hawaii and back. I was fortunate to study with Craig Lesley in Maui--he encouraged me to keep writing. I had several agents express interest in the book.

Then on the last day of the conference, the first 25 pages and a synopsis of Every Good & Perfect Gift won first runner-up in the Rupert Hughes Prose Contest. Mary Ann Naples, who would become my agent, stopped me as I was leaving to go catch my plane and told me that she had great interest in any book where God was a woman. It was my 41st birthday, and I, of course, took these things as a sign. (If I'd lost, I'm sure I would not have taken that as a sign to quit.)

I came home and wrote in every spare moment to finish the book. After reading the completed manuscript, Mary Ann agreed to be my agent, helped me make the book stronger, and sold it to Harmony.

Last summer my children and my parents and I went to Hawaii. My dad even surfed with the kids and myself.

Neela: How has writing a novel been different from writing short fiction?

Brenda: I think the novel is more difficult at times because you must know your characters well enough to stay true to them for the entire three hundred pages. And your writing must be strong enough to carry their story. However the novel is more forgiving of sluggish prose. In short fiction, every word is a heartbeat.

Neela: Can you tell us about your relationship with your publisher, Harmony Books? How did that come about?

Brenda: My relationship with my publisher is one of the nicest things about this experience. My editor, Shaye Areheart, my publicist, Katherine Beitner, and many others at Harmony have been very supportive and helpful. The book is beautifully designed and people often comment on how lovely it is. That is Shaye's eye in action. I can remember after going and meeting the staff at Harmony, I walked down the street in New York, thinking how every day of the seven years it took to get the book written and sold was worth it. Not many groups of people make you feel that way.

I am also blessed with a great agent who, of course, was how I ended up at Harmony.

Neela: Please tell us about the writing process for you. Where does your inspiration come from? Do you take notes from daily life, do you set aside time every day to write?

Brenda: My ideal routine is to shut myself in the stacks of the North Carolina State University library every other Saturday and Sunday with the candy and TAB I've smuggled in and to spend time writing and reading and rewarding myself with the candy and the TAB. I like to write in longhand because then I rewrite when I type it into the computer. I'm afraid writing longhand and the TAB show my age. The earlier in the day I write the easier it is. With two active children, who grew into their teenage years during the time I completed this book, I had to write around ballgames, school events, stomach bugs and other phenomenon of family life.

As with other writers, my inspiration comes from many sources. I love to read and always have. As I mentioned earlier, I grew up in a family that loves to tell stories. It wasn't until later in life that I realized the words they spoke were literature that nobody had written down.

Brenda: I do speak with groups all the time about the book, and I am happy to do that if they'd like to contact me through the website, www.brendajernigan.com.