Cats – Page 2 – PAMELA JANE

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A Writer’s Inner Cosmos or Don’t Underestimate Yourself!

Note: This post was originally published in a slightly altered form at womensmemoirs.com. My late kitty, Mittens, didn’t have much personality. As my friend and co-author, Debbie, once observed, “he’s one notch above a stuffed animal.” I argued for two notches, but she had a point. Poor guy. It wasn’t his fault that he was born with no street-smarts or even house-smarts, and slept 23-3/4 hours a day. He was also terribly timid and ran away meowing if he even saw an ant. The most dangerous thing he ever attacked was a Starbucks straw. So imagine my shock and amazement when Mittens caught and killed a mouse in our living room, just a few weeks before he died. It goes to show, you never know what someone is capable of. Furthermore, “what someone is capable of” is not fixed or finite; it changes and shifts as we evolve. I’ve seen this truth play out (to one mouse’s misfortune) in many … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

Wickham or the Nameless Narrator of The Aspern Papers?

I brought this hat back from Venice when we were living in Florence a few years ago. I know – it’s more of a Henry James than a Jane Austen thing. Mittens has that world-weary look of the perpetual traveler. Maybe it’s Mr. Wickham on one of his post-marital sojourns while Lydia visits Pemberley. Jane Austen mentions London and Bath but he could have taken a quick jaunt to Venice. He definitely looks like he may have had too much of a good thing. Poor Mittens; he was not a terribly excitable kitty. His main response to our taking him to live with us in Florence was to yawn. … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

Jane in the morning and Jane at Night!

I fell asleep listening to Emma the other night on my iPod, and woke up listening to Hitler. Struggled to wake myself up and out of the nightmare but didn’t quite succeed. I realized in the morning that Emma had morphed into Explaining Hitler* (the books are arranged alphabetically). Last month Middlemarch leapt into Moscow 1941. The history books are great for walking but not for sleeping. The trouble is, books can switch in the middle of the night. The way around this is to make a playlist of the book you want to listen to during the night, so it just keeps circling. What books you listen to at night are important. For me, only Jane Austen and George Eliot’s Middlemarch pass the test because I know and love Austen’s novels and Eliot’s masterpiece intimately and trust them completely. (Sometimes Sense and Sensibility is hard to take at night though, because Marianne’s grief and panic in London are so … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

An Elizabeth Bennet Moment

Have you ever experienced have an Elizabeth Bennet moment? Or, more specifically, an Elizabeth-Bennet-defies-Lady-Catherine-moment, the experience of “saying the thing you mean to say at the moment you mean to say it.”* Or maybe you didn’t say what you meant to say; maybe you just thought it. When I was eighteen, I fell in love, dropped out of college and ran away to live with my boyfriend, who was at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. After a year or so, we decided to get married. David was home for the summer, and I flew back to his parents house (which to me looked like Pemberley in Connecticut) to talk over marriage plans. His parents had made it abundantly clear that they disapproved of me and our living arrangements, and I felt shy and insecure as I sat holding David’s hand in their well-appointed living room, his mother shaking with rage at the idea that her son was marrying a college … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

Giving Thanks for Jane

Jane Austen is one of the ten reasons I’m glad I’m alive. Or maybe even one of five, right up there with love, the silliness of cats, and morning light in the trees. When I think about Jane Austen I feel gratitude for her wisdom, wit, and genius; her stories are about all of us, and her characters are all of us. (Have you ever caught yourself sounding horrifyingly like foolish, vulgar Mrs. Bennet or pedantic Mary? And haven’t we all been Emma Woodhouse at her very worst moment?) Jane, being Jane, understood the part gratitude plays in love: “But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of goodwill which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection.…Such a change … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

A PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (and Kitties!) CHRISTMAS

Here’s the question – do cats understand Christmas? Perhaps they’ve heard stories of Santa Claus, a jolly old elf who flies around making mischief delivering gifts. “But what does it do for me?” one might ask. Linus, for example, pictured above, does not get why this weird creature astride a goose is perched on his shoulder. “And what does it have to do with Pride and Prejudice?” We will explore this question in future blog posts, but it appears to us that Pride and Prejudice and Kitties and Christmas can all fit into one picture. … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

How our “Pride and Prejudice and Kitties” Query Survived 75 Agents

Until now, we’ve generally referred to the query letter that sold our book, Pride and Prejudice and Kitties, as having been sent to “X” number of agents. But now, thanks to Galley Cat at Media Bistro, the word is out that our query letter was rejected by 75 agents well – 74 because we did finally sell the book. You can read our query here. Actually, during the submission process we did manage to capture the attention of several agents. The problem was that most were daunted by the logistics of taking 100 funny photographs of cats in Regency settings. Also, to be honest, it took Debbie and me several years to clarify and define our concept for the book. … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

Kitty Custody Dilemma

Rescue My daughter, Annelise, and I are having serious kitty custody issues. Not surprisingly, Noelle (the kitty in question) is having issues of her own. In the early morning, before Annelise is up, Noelle behaves as if she is my kitty, rolling on the floor, rubbing against my legs, and initiating petting fests. Later, when Annelise is up and about, she stays close to her, and behaves as if she is terrified of me – until Annelise goes to work later in the day. Then she switches back to me again. We have come to believe that Noelle finds herself in an impossible dilemma. She is a one-person cat with two people! Noelle was a feral cat who was rescued by a local animal shelter when she was about four weeks old. For the next six months, before we adopted her, she lived in a small back-room behind a thrift shop with other kitties, and lots of people coming and … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

P&P = Guilt-free TV

little girl

I raised my daughter, Annelise, on the BBC P&P – perfect for when she was home sick. You get six fairly guilt-free hours out of it. You can’t say that with any other TV program. When she was about three, I was wheeling her in her stroller at our local mall when all at once she cried out, “Prejudice!” Everyone turned and looked at me accusingly; what was I teaching my kid? “Huh?” I said, leaning over the stroller. A big smile spread over her face. “Mr. Darcy!” she cried. The kid had the right idea. Too bad no one at the mall appreciated it. … Read on

Pamela Jane is the author of over thirty books from board books to memoir. She is also a writing coach, freelance writer, and public speaker. Learn more about her by booking a school visit, perusing her blog, or reading her memoir, An Incredible Talent for Existing: A Writer's Story.

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