The Write Focus: Jane Sloven Interview ~ Serendipity is Her Friend

Serendipity is the best word to describe Jane Sloven’s writing.

Listen to an audio of the podcast.

View the video on YouTube.

Timings

0:08 Jane’s journey into writing; her focus on problem-solving, relationships, female protagonists, psychotherapists, trauma, and managed care
6:00 Real life informing the writing
7:00 Blurb for Termination of Benefits
8:50 Jane’s original writing process. (complete pantstering)
11:00 Her forward path: mentors (“All writing is revision”), critique groups, courses and workshops
16:00 Compassionate Journey: Honoring Our Mothers’ Stories, essays with other writers
17:44 Publishing with the attendant queries, summaries, and synopses; honesty with agents; editing; and small presses
25:52 Working on the sequel Fragment of Doubt and a prequel

29:22 Changing her writing procedure, bingeing on writing
31:30 Revising to add twists and braiding in other plot threads
33:20 Writing should be pleasurable
35:45 up to the wire on finding critique groups
38:56 Closing

Bio

Jane Sloven started her career doing law reform work, working with juvenile offenders in a program that diverted them from court to counseling, tutoring, and job training. Then she went to law school and worked with a small feminist firm in Boston before moving to Maine to take a position developing services for victims of juvenile crime in a restitution program.
After working in a traditional law practice, she switched careers to social work, focusing on counseling. She says, “I let go of law and never looked back—other than to do training in mediation and do some volunteer mediation. I had a private psychotherapy practice for about 25 years.”

She wrote her first mystery, Termination of Benefits, (published in 2018) to subversively teach about trauma and recovery. Jane also wanted to explore how people come to terms with clairvoyance, which is one of her protagonist’s struggles. She placed her novel in the Portland, Maine, area.

Termination of Benefits was a Foreward Reviews Indies Finalist for Suspense and Thrillers, a 2019 Next Generation Indie Award Finalist for suspense, and the Grand Prize Winner of the Maine Romance Writers 2019 People’s Choice Strut Your Stuff Award.