Gilian Baker is a former writing and literature professor who finally threw in the
towel and decided to just show ‘em how it’s done. She has gone on to forge a
life outside of academia by adding blogger and ghostwriter to her CV. She
currently uses her geeky superpowers only for good to entertain cozy mystery
readers the world over. See what she’s up to on her website.
“Sometimes I think throwing pottery is just as frustrating as running an
online business,” admits my protagonist, Jade Blackwell. And she’s not wrong. She and I
are both online entrepreneurs, so we know firsthand of the frustrations of
which we speak. Though I haven’t thrown pottery for many years, it was once my
creative passion. And, since there are so
many ways for it to all go wrong, it makes perfect fodder for Favorites,
Failures and Frustrations.
I loved playing in the mud
as a kid. I loved getting my hands dirty while growing organic vegetable as an
adult. So why not, I thought, try a pottery class? It started out as just a
weekly class, but soon grew into an obsession. For the next seven years, I
spent every free moment in a dusty pottery studio and loved it. I still use
many of the items I created back then, as do the friends and family with whom I
shared them. Even though I’m now too busy writing cozy mysteries to throw pots,
I still enjoy the ones I literally created with my bare hands years ago.
That was the “favorites”
part. Now, on to the failures. There were many. I would study pictures in
pottery magazines thinking, “Heck, I can make that.” This was around the time I
learned that nothing ever turns out like the picture. The times when a friend
or family member requested a certain item made was when I experienced the
biggest failures. I’d want it to be so perfect. The harder I tried, the worse
it got. I better understand that concept now—the more “work” you make of
something, the harder it’s going to be. When I let myself enjoy the simple
pleasure of creating, I ended up with something lovely. When I didn’t, well, I
didn’t. During my time as a potter, I learned the best way to do anything was
to let go of how the final product turned out and just enjoy the process.
Frustrations can easily
overshadow the pleasure found in the pottery studio. One reason for this is the
many steps required to finish a single piece.
The clay must be thrown,
dried, trimmed, glazed and fired, and at any point in the process, it can be
wrecked. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? But oh, when you create something beautiful,
you forget all about the frustrations and can’t wait to do it all over again.
Throwing pottery is a great metaphor for life. If you are as malleable
as the clay, you can learn patience and mindfulness. If you don’t…you probably
won’t stick with it for long.
Though I started this post
with a quote from Jade Blackwell, it’s from the second book in the series,
scheduled to be released in May. So technically, Jade isn’t a potter yet, but
it fit so perfectly with the topic, I decided to use it anyway. In the first book, Blogging is Murder, Jade doesn’t have time for anything other than
blogging and investigating the murder her friend is suspected of. But during
that first case, she remembers there’s more to life than work and is determined
to have more fun. In Book Two, she takes up pottery…until another crime needs
to be solved.
Blogging is
Murder
A Jade
Blackwell Mystery
Though she was certainly born with all the traits of a world-class
private detective, blogger Jade Blackwell believed she would do nothing more
than solve the murders in her latest favorite cozy mystery book.
Set in mountainous southeastern Wyoming, Jade Blackwell lives in a log home in the quaint village of Aspen Falls with her husband Christian and daughter Penelope (Ellie). She left her life as a tenured college English professor at the University of Wyoming four years ago, sick of the bureaucracy, mounds of essays to grade and apathetic students. She turns to blogging and ghostwriting as her new career.
Set in mountainous southeastern Wyoming, Jade Blackwell lives in a log home in the quaint village of Aspen Falls with her husband Christian and daughter Penelope (Ellie). She left her life as a tenured college English professor at the University of Wyoming four years ago, sick of the bureaucracy, mounds of essays to grade and apathetic students. She turns to blogging and ghostwriting as her new career.
Jade’s promising career as a blogger halts abruptly when she learns of a hacker who is controlling her friend and fellow blogger Liz Collin’s business remotely. When the hacker is found dead in her home, Liz is thrown in jail.
Determined to help her friend regain her life and livelihood, Jade teams up with Liz’s reluctant lawyer, Gabriel Langdon, to get Liz off the hook and out of jail. What she learns will break the case wide open, while unraveling her faith in humanity and the safety she feels living in the Rocky Mountain hamlet she calls home.
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