My Writing Journey

I began writing at a very early age, journaling by three years old and writing poetry in first grade. When I was sad, I wrote. When I was happy, I wrote. My mother even used to joke that I was born with a pen in my hand.

I graduated with a double major in Graphic Design and Creative Writing, but I didn’t write professionally in the beginning. I went to work for an advertising agency as a graphic designer, and eventually became an art director. It wasn’t until the copywriter on staff was away on an extended vacation, that I was given the opportunity to write professionally. I was asked to sit in her office and come up with the script for a Taco Bell radio ad. I ended up writing something that went on to win a San Diego Ad Club Award. How unfortunate that the copywriter took all the credit!

Eventually, I applied for a job as a copywriter, and landed a great job at an advertising agency in Downtown San Diego. Although I felt “accomplished,” I longed for more variety and the freedom to create. Eventually, I became a freelance copywriter and editor, landing a lucrative position with a prominent PR firm in San Diego. Freelancing gave me more space to explore my own path, which allowed me the ability to become a feature writer for magazines such as Young Rider and the Carmel Valley News. Among my many writing assignments, I was hired to write a character development curriculum for the YMCA, and also edited the manuscripts of a handful of writers, all whom secured lucrative careers in the traditional publishing realm.

A pivotal point in my career as a writer came when I began reading to my small children. I was so underwhelmed by the content of most books that I decided to write a few of my own. While I recited these stories to my children, I never actively pursued publishing any of them… until now. HOMER is one such story that I just had to share. And thanks to my talented illustrator, kids beyond my own can enjoy this whimsical tale.

The backstories of my books…

Cry For the Moon

This is the first book I published, and is based on my own life. My father was a manically depressed man who I had been estranged from as an awkward 12-year-old girl. My mother’s abrupt new relationship and marriage became my reality, and although my father lived a block away from my high school, I never saw him again.

I yearned for my father, who had been given shock therapy to keep him from taking his own life, or so I was told. As a result, his memory of my brother and me was gone, albeit temporary, it was apparent when I ran up to him at a restaurant a few years later, and he denied knowing me. My memory of that incident was very foggy, until my aunt, who had been there that day, relayed the details to me many years later.

I wrote Cry For the Moon to support children dealing with a parent who suffers from depression. The book is about a horse-crazy, sixth-grade girl who uses humor to help her father find joy. The words flowed out of me like a waterfall, and I completed this story in a few short weeks.

The miracle that resulted from publishing this book was in 2015, when my estranged father’s girlfriend had a serious conversation with him about trying to find his kids. By coincidence, she was a genealogy expert, and she started her search. She found a Google image of me at a book signing event, and she ordered a copy of Cry For the Moon; the book she saw in the photo. She gave it to my father, who read it and recognized himself as the fictional father. Shortly thereafter, he contacted me, and we were able to reunite several times before his untimely death in 2019.

How To Grow a Marriage

I got the idea for How to Grow a Marriage, when our two children and many of their friends were becoming engaged to be married. So many of them came to my husband and me, asking for secrets to our successful 30-year marriage.

I decided to interview 50 couples who had been married for at least 25 years on subjects like honestly, fidelity and patience, and my inspirational guidebook was born. The sweetest moment was when my friend’s father, who had been married to the same woman for 74 years took me aside to his office in their assisted living facility and told me that he had been unfaithful to his wife. Just once. He was a doctor at the time, and had kissed a nurse. Letting me in on a secret he had held for 60 years freed him. We prayed about it, and from there he went on to enjoy his life alongside his wife, until he died at 102 years old. His wife had dementia and was never told that he had passed. She died unexpectantly herself two days later. A beautiful love story indeed.

Dead Ringer

Covid had most people “sheltering in place,” especially where I live in California. There was a ridiculous amount of downtime to endure, so I entertained myself by writing a psychological thriller. Maybe it was a metaphor for the uncertain times we were living in that spurred me to spend eight hours a day immersed in this project.

What inspired me to write a thriller novel in the first place was the fact that most of what I had read in this genre had become too easy to put down after the first few electrifying chapters. I thought I would write an adult novel that gripped a reader from the start, and didn’t let go until the very last sentence. Dead Ringer definitely delivers on this promise.

Without giving too much away, all of the places in the story do exist, although the name of the villa in Italy was changed. I vacationed at this 17th century villa in Levanto, Italy, so my descriptions represent a real account of the setting. The actual name of the place is Agriturismo Villanova.

One event that took place that I wove into Dead Ringer was an episode that occurred one night at dinner. We were dining late and the check didn’t come, so my husband got up to pay the bill. The problem was, he didn’t come back to the table! I waited for over 30 minutes, with no clue as to where he had gone, no way to contact him and no one to ask, as not a soul in sight spoke English. Turns out he hadn’t enough Euros to pay, and he went in search of a nearby ATM without telling me. The ATM didn’t work, so he walked further to find another one, and got lost amid the curvy, dark streets of the village. I drew from that feeling of helplessness and abandonment to create a pivotal scene in the book.

In developing the characters for this novel, I searched hundreds of images until one spoke to me. Here are the muses for my book. I do not know these people, but this is how I imagined them looking.

Although the woman above is older, her features resemble my character as you can see by the cover image.

HOMER

Originally inspired by a news article about a horse that lived in a home in rural Tennessee, HOMER brings readers inside the home of a determined six-year-old girl named Lily. No matter how much she tries to convince her parents that her full-grown horse would fit in perfectly, chaos becomes elevated to the point where her parents demand that he go back outside. And then, when all hope is seemingly lost, Lily sheds a single tear, and “POOF!” Homer is reduced to the size of a stuffed animal who is definitely welcome to stay.

My own passion for horses prompted me to make HOMER the first of hopefully many more picture books to come. And here I am with one of the horses I raised from a young filly; Fashion Taylored, a feisty Spotted Saddle Horse from Tennessee.

Freelance

After going out on my own from my position as a Senior Copywriter for a prominent advertising agency in 2008, I have worked as a freelance copy editor and proofreader for many clients, including one of San Diego’s top PR firms (since 2012). I have written and edited countless press releases, pitches, web sites, eblasts and edited many award-winning authors’ manuscripts both for spelling and grammar (line editing) and content.

I prefer to work at an hourly rate, which is $70 hour for most projects. I can give a pretty accurate cost estimate to my clients before I take on an assignment, so they know what it will cost to use my services.

Freelance/Awards/Certifications

Feature writer for Young Rider Magazine ▪ Feature Writer, Carmel Valley News ▪ Winner SDBAA Poetry Contest ▪ San Diego Library Self-Published Author Awards ▪ UCSD Copyediting Certification ▪ Author of Character Counts curriculum ▪ Author of YMCA after-school Character Development Program ▪ Editor for renowned children’s book authors, Stacy Goldblatt, John Ritter, Beth Brust, etc. ▪ Created website copy for hundreds of clients worldwide, including former White House Chef, Walter Scheib ▪ Author of four published books in varying genres ▪ SCBWI Member ▪ Author’s Guild Member

To discover how I can help you with your project, feel free to contact me at: jaynehaines@gmail.com