[00:00:00] Jane: Welcome to historical happy hour, the podcast that explores new and exciting historical fiction novels. I’m your host, Jane Healey, and today’s episode is a very special holiday happy hour.

Yay. End of year. I’m joined by a co host tonight. We’re doing a little different tonight. My fabulous friend, Christine O’Shea. President of the Club Red Book Club. Welcome, Christine. Thank you so much for doing this.

[00:00:26] Christine: Thank you, Jane. I’m absolutely thrilled to be on with all of your beautiful people that share your journey all the time with all your amazing novels.

[00:00:34] Jane: Thank you. I just mentioned to everybody in the chat we’re gonna do a different format tonight. I’ll explain as we go. Tell everyone, tell people where you’re from and what you’re reading. I’m going to give an intro about the wonderful Christine and then I have a few questions for her about book clubs and all things book clubs and then I’m going to hand over the hosting to her.

So Christine O’Shea is the founder of Club Red. which stands for Read, Eat, Drink, an international book club founded over 14 years ago. Christine’s approach in leading this club is to foster relationships with authors, publishers, publicists, and bookstores. This has given Club Red many opportunities to create dynamic meetings that engage members and authors alike.

Club Red has also raised thousands of dollars in charity, including most recently with Fiona Davis, an author we all know and love, and the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Other club highlights include a partnership with Sony and Showcase Theatre for an advanced screening of It Ends With Us, and a trip to Ireland in October to meet two authors there.

Christine is a buyer for a major supermarket chain, a fitness instructor, a mom to a 14 year old Bichon Frise pup, an amazing friend to authors, and a force of nature, and I’m just so happy you’re here with me tonight.

[00:01:49] Christine: I’m so happy to.

[00:01:51] Jane: Okay, so I have a few questions for you. I always say that I’m so grateful for all the book clubs that have chosen my novels over the years, and Club Red has been with me from the start.

You ladies are amazing. Talk about the Club Red origin story. How did it get started?

[00:02:08] Christine: Sure. We actually it was actually a passion of mine to become a better reader. And I wanted to be in a book club, but I couldn’t find anything with the opening. So I said sounds like I need to start one for myself.

So I gathered My friends my neighbors high school people You name it like just all walks of connections of life with me And I think we were 12 people to start or nine people to start and we just came together and said let’s form a book club. We’ll meet once a month. We couldn’t figure out how we were going to do the whole, a lot of people split it, like I’ll host one time and I said, you know what, I live in a central location because we were like 50 miles apart for some of the people and it just worked out that I would host it once a month.

And as a book club, we’ve evolved the read, read, eat, drink. We really wanted to make sure that whatever book we read, I’m, I would always host a three course meal based on the book. So our first book was The Help. So if you’ve read the book or even seen the movie, you know that dessert was a chocolate pie with fried chicken, et cetera.

But through the years we’ve evolved as a group, we’ve grown and, we’ve then became. During COVID, we had to become hybrid, where we really stayed together through everything. But through the 14 years, it’s been an involvement of then reaching out, if you don’t ask the answer is always going to be no.

So I reached out to you when I saw, this up and coming author, and that’s how Club Red has been so successful with 87 percent author participation. It’s, if you don’t ask It’s always going to be no.

[00:03:57] Jane: Yeah. And that’s where we started. It’s pretty amazing. You have a lot of authors who participate and who have now become friends of the club over the years, which is incredible.

[00:04:06] Christine: They support us, we support them, absolutely.

[00:04:08] Jane: And you’re

[00:04:09] Christine: so And

I’m only as good as all the team on my club. The club, they can run great without me. They truly can. Oh yeah, and a lot of them are They used to be reckoned.

[00:04:18] Jane: They really are, and a lot of them are commenting in the chat, by the way.

Hello everyone! So cute, so nice of them to show up. So I want to talk about. So how do you select the books and what’s your meetings format? That’s a two part question. I know, but

[00:04:31] Christine: you know what? That’s a great question because I felt like we needed structure. I wanted to make sure we don’t become a wine club.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I really wanted to just pull us all together. And then after the meeting, let it rip, do what you need to do. , but fourth meeting, we the format that works for us is someone will be the leader. Now, in the past we’ve done it a million different ways.

We’ve done a voting process where we have a Facebook, a private Facebook page, and everyone will list books for a week, and then we have a week of voting. And that will give us, three to four books at a time that we’re gonna queue up for the few months. I’ll certainly reach out to authors, things like that.

Whoever has put in that request to the book, then they’re going to be the leader. And the leader doesn’t mean that they’re hosting. The hosting is always at a one central location for the most part. That leader then has to work on three things. One is the author bio. So they just pull that off Google or, certainly off the author’s page, things like that.

Then they’ll help come up with 10 questions about the book. And you can certainly find that on the web. And sometimes it’s even at the back of the books, which is great or on other various book platforms. And the third thing is, An important one, the meal. They would work on, make taking notes, what did they eat and if they didn’t eat, we’ll figure something out.

Like we just had our Christmas party. The Christmas party is a swanky swap that we all do. We’re all in our jammies and we have Chinese food and celebrate. Our year of reflection. So that’s pretty much how we have done our books. And usually if we get an author The author will come in and take over giving us their information same similar structure But another thing that we’ve added which has been so much fun I think we’ve done it to a few of your books as we cast it at the end Oh, we’ve been very lucky to have some authors that have gone on to have Netflix series, movies, et cetera.

And we help them cast it in our own way. I feel like Ryan Reynolds has always been one of our movies. So

[00:06:50] Jane: why wouldn’t he be, right? Why wouldn’t he be? So

[00:06:53] Christine: Yes, we

[00:06:53] Jane: do like to cast it cause it’s fun. That’s one of my questions. That’s become one of my standard questions on the podcast. It’s who would be, who would star in the movie version of this book?

So that’s awesome. What is your favorite book club moment of all time?

[00:07:07] Christine: Okay, so I actually pulled this to the club because I had two and then it just became so many that everybody has and I’ll speak to two that I’ll speak to three. One is we, I try and get the authors and reach out to them when it’s they’re new or they’re new writing or you know There’s some type of connection personal whatever I reached out to marcia clark And was able to get her as one of our first big names and this was back when skype was going Not even zoom And she joined us Sitting from her bathroom floor, this in, out in California.

So I’ll just never forget how funny that was to have, such a great author. And honestly, Marsha was amazing. So she was a great first time author and two other funny stories. And one, one you’re actually going to have coming up, Robert Dragoni is going to be one of your authors, I believe coming up.

Oh, that’s the new book. Robert is such an amazing man. And by the way, everyone, if you have read Robert Greep he’s fantastic author, but he also narrates his own audibles and his voice is amazing. That’s really amazing. And we, I remember our first book we had with him was the extraordinary life of Sam Hell.

Love the book. He joined us via Zoom because he’s a West Coaster. And this is right when COVID happened. Not everyone is familiar with Zoom. It’s been three, four years, and I’m still going, You’re muted! You’re muted! Anyway, Robert joins us. And his, he’s a handsome man. He’s got personality, charming.

He’s everything. Next thing I know, we have 30 people on Zoom. The women are writing, ooh, he’s hot, he’s horrible, they don’t realize that Robert can see everything. And then he starts snickering, and then one of my besties, Christina, is shut the chat down right away. We had to shut the chat down, and we still, Robert and I will still laugh about, but he remembers Club Red vividly because of that hysterical time.

How could he not, really? And then there was this one time and one of the other women brought up that I surprised the club for Christmas for one of our Christmas parties with Fiona Davis and Hank Philippi Ryan. So they showed up at the Club Red Christmas party in their jammies and just shocked everybody.

And those were like three great times that we had.

[00:09:47] Jane: Yeah, that sounds amazing. And those two authors, they are as lovely and talented and kind as can be. Like, they’re just like such great people. I’m not surprised they shared up like that. So what is your best advice for someone who is looking to start a book club and doesn’t know how to begin?

[00:10:04] Christine: Yeah, it’s a great question. I always think it’s best to surround yourself with like minded people that want to do the same with you. So I encourage people to just talk to their friends, their family, co workers and say, Hey, this is what I’m thinking of doing. Let’s come together once a month or every other month.

Let’s pick a book. Let’s and I do urge a structure just because it can go off kilter very quickly. And then I have to give the evil lie to get everybody back in which they all know that evil eye. But you know what? And I think that you don’t have to have the authors, but it’s always nice to reach out and ask because authors do love to help and participate.

[00:10:48] Jane: Yeah, excellent. Good advice. I also noticed in community Facebook groups, I recently saw a couple people looking to join our forum, but different new book clubs. So that’s always a good source too. I see a couple people raising their hands. We’re only taking comments in the Q and A or in the chat because I’m not that organized, right?

I get too distracted. So that’s what we do. Okay. I am going to now hand over the hosting. To you. And take everyone’s questions after Christine asked me a few.

[00:11:20] Christine: Thank you. Listen, everyone, I know everyone’s here for Jane’s Historical Happy Hour, but I do know that I’ve invited some people that actually don’t know Jane, and I know that’s hard to believe.

So I would love to just give a quick bio of Jane. Jane Heeler is the author of The Saturday Evening Girls Club, Good Night from Paris, The Secret Stealers, and my personal favorite, That got us together, the Beantown Girls. She’s also a Washington Post. And an Amazon Charts bestseller. She’s a graduate of the University of New Hampshire and Northeastern University right in Boston’s Back Bay.

Jane shares a home north of Boston with her husband, her two daughters, a cat and an adorable dog. Her next novel is actually called The Women of Arlington Hall and it’s going to release on July 8th of 2025. So I know listeners want to hear more about The Women of Arlington Hall. Tell us about the premise of the story.

How did you come up with it?

[00:12:23] Jane: Thank you again for doing this, Christine. I appreciate it. And the reason I decided to do this for end of the year is because through the last few podcasts, people have been asking what’s going on with your book? What’s your book about? And I just, I want to I’m too focused, hyper focused on the author I’m having as a guest to like, go off topic and start talking about my stuff.

So thank you all for coming tonight. And wanted to tell you a little bit about the women of Arlington hall. Before I dive into if there get a historical happy hour, I guess you want to see in 2025, please put them in the chat and I will do the best I can to get them on the show. I’m always looking for suggestions.

So I’m going to share a few slides that to talk about, how I came up with this premise and the origin story of the women of Arlington Hall 1 minute. Let me see. Okay. That’s we tested this, Christine. And of course, now it’s being. Let me try one more time. There we go.

[00:13:20] Christine: It happens.

[00:13:22] Jane: There we go. Okay. Play from start. How’s that looking, Christy? Is that looking okay? Yes. Okay, good. All right, I’m gonna move this stuff out of the way so I can see my notes. Okay this is an article from 2018 and it’s, in the picture is this woman, Angeline Nene, and she was one of these code breakers in Washington, D.

C. at the start of the Cold War. She was involved in something called the Venona Project and their mission was to crack Russia’s Cold War. unbreakable code system and decipher intercepted messages to Russia’s spies in the U. S. And they accomplished that. It remains one of the greatest feats in the history of U.

S. code breaking, U. S. cryptology. And the Venona project, these, it was predominantly women, including Angelina. She’s 99 years old in this picture. This was in 2018. And I held onto this article since then, but I just, I didn’t know how I was going to find my way into the story, frankly because people like to learn about work, people, code breaking can be interesting, but code breaking day to day, the work of it, especially in the late 1940s, like when there was no real computers, except for big IBM machines was boring and tedious.

So I’m like, how do I write a story about code breaking? And these amazing women that is not, Boring and tedious. So it took me a while. Obviously it took me like, we’re going on to 2025. So it took me a while to figure out how I was going to do that. But I really I, like some of my other stories, I decided to focus on the friendships and these women had to take an oath of secrecy.

With the U. S. government about the kind of work they did. So they took this oath, and they could not speak to their family about it. They could not speak to outside friends about it. If they leaked anything about the codebreaking work that they were doing at Arlington Hall in Washington, D. C. They would, they could have been charged and executed, and that’s how serious this was.

For that reason, they were working together at Arlington Hall. Many of them were living together at these makeshift dormitories in Arlington Farms, right near Arlington Hall in Arlington, Virginia. There was multiple dorms that were made, that were built in World War II. They were crappy.

But they were cheap, and girls who were moving to D. C. and needed a place to live often ended up living there. And because they had to be secret, and because they lived together and worked together, they formed really close friendships that endured over the years beyond their work at Arlington Hall.

This was the boss of the girls who worked with the code breaking girls who worked in Arlington Hall. His name was Meredith Gardner. He was the head of the code breaking unit at the ASA. which was absorbed into the National Security Agency, that this was the Army Security Agency. He was a genius.

He was a genius. He was a polyglot. He spoke at least nine languages, I’d have to look. He is considered a legend in the cryptology history. He was a legend in the community after World War II. Still quite young in the late 40s, extremely introverted. really preferred intellectual pursuits to people.

And so he was a genius at the cobra. Not such a genius with working with people. I think today you might describe him as neurodivergent. He’s. He was a really interesting character. And so he, I had to include him in the story because he was, I feel like he’s one of these figures in history that has not been given their due.

And this is Robert Lamphere of the FBI. Now, Meredith Garner is working at the ASA. They start trying to track these Russian spies in the U. S. They realize that these Russian spies are stealing secrets on how to build an atomic bomb. So the FBI has to get involved and Robert is the one in the dashing suit right here.

He’s handsome and charming. And rough and tumble the opposite of Meredith Gardner, but they are forced to come together and work together to track down these Russian spies in the U. S. with their two teams. So there’s a team of codebreakers at Arlington Hall, and there’s a team of FBI agents.

And Meredith and Robert, these two odd couple, it was this odd couple arrangement, have to get their teams together. To find these spies in the U. S. before they can build the atomic bomb, before the Russians get the bomb. So that is a very quick back story about the, what became the novel The Women of Arlington Hall.

And one of my questions was, What if a, one of the female code breakers working at Arlington Hall has some sort of relationship with an FBI agent working working on the other side of it with Robert Lanthier? So that was so Kat Killeen is the protagonist. She’s from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

She went to Radcliffe. She’s a female codebreaker and upends her life and her wedding on the day of her wedding and and moves to DC. She’s offered this job. And and so she moves to D. C. and meets all these women working at Arlington Hall, realizes this is something she’s always wanted to do.

She runs into Jonathan Dartis, who went to Harvard with her. Harvard and Radcliffe were two separate, but they took some classes together. And and so that it’s a friendship story. It’s a big slow burn romance. It’s, it’s. Based in true history, Meredith’s team broke the unbreakable Russian codes and read all communications and tracked down the spies who were stealing atomic secrets in the U.

S., including Klaus Fuchs, who was in the Oppenheimer movie, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, we all know about them. And I, but I also like I said, I wanted big friendships. I want a big slow burn romance and I wanted a Hollywood ending. I, one thing that the, that good night from Paris, it was somewhat confining because she was a real woman in history, Drew Leighton Tartier, who was the protagonist, was a real woman.

So you, I couldn’t change too much about her life and I couldn’t change the ending of the story. Cause that was history and I, I wanted, and her family is still alive and I’m friends, I know them. So this story I wanted more I wanted to go back and write in the way that I love to write with with some big, with some funny parts and some sad parts and some friendships and a few dashes of romance.

And and I’m really happy with the way it turned out. I’m hoping to have a cover for everyone. Very soon. We’ve been going back and forth about that, but but that in a nutshell is the women of Arlington Hall. I will stop my rambling and and take some more questions from Christine.

[00:20:13] Christine: Really, it’s really great.

Such a detail and you definitely do a lot of work, this is your first Cold War novel. So where did you, like, why did you decide to write about this era? Because you’ve written about so many, but why Cold War? Cold War.

[00:20:28] Jane: Yeah, I, I think that I, the last three books were all World War II, and I, as much as I love World War II, I wanted to, I wanted to focus on something new and stretch myself a little bit, learn a different aspect of history.

I wanted to take the story back to the U. S. And, I feel like I love World War II, the kind of sub genre that it is World War II, but I feel like it’s pretty crowded. There’s a lot of World War II out there, so I’m like, it might be time to try something new.

[00:20:58] Christine: I always do appreciate that you have strong women on, strong women leads within your books, that’s always been a great thing. Now for a couple questions that you know our book club typically asks all our authors is What is your writing style? So Give us some really down and dirty detail like do you even change in the morning when you’re gonna sit down and write? I know people that will actually Walk, take a shower, walk out of the door of the house and walk back in this is my job,

Give us a down and dirty of your writing style.

[00:21:30] Jane: Yeah. So this one I always ask authors on the podcast, are you a plotter or a pantser? And I am very much, I plot out my books in great detail just because there’s so much research involved. It’s the only way I can keep relatively organized. I’m not really that organized, but it helps me keep the research organized.

I outline, before I really write much, I write, I outline chapter by chapter, scene by a scene, every event that has to occur in the scene, to the point where like my, my, my outline becomes like a very messy first draft. And and then in terms of where I write, this one I was really on a tight budget.

Deadline. So I spent a lot of time at the quiet room at the Wakefield Public Library, actually, because I just knew I had to hit a certain word count every day. And if I didn’t, I would be in trouble. So yeah. And, when you have dogs and cats and teenagers coming in and out it’s sometimes hard to write at home.

[00:22:28] Christine: What was the word count that you tried to achieve every day now that you’ve said that?

[00:22:32] Jane: Yeah it depended, but I tried to aim for, believe it or not, I’m in Scribner is a word processing program. Some writers on here might know about it. It’s like word on steroids. It lets you do a lot of different mapping and plotting in addition to writing and so it lets you set a word count so I, my word count for this manuscript was 100, 000 words and then it would, and I set my deadline, so I would aim for, I think it was around 1200 words a day.

Okay. And if I didn’t hit that by Friday, like Monday through Friday, then I would work all weekend. Yeah, it was a lot.

[00:23:06] Christine: Did you know your ending? Or did you write and then get your ending?

[00:23:11] Jane: I did. I did know my ending. In fact, that one, it’s really true, like when you’re working on anything creative, a lot of times things come to you, like, when you’re in the car or in the shower or going for a walk, and I was listening, this is a little cheesy, but I was listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road.

I love that song. And some of the lyrics to that, I’m like Oh, that’s the last scene. That’s the last scene of the book that right there. And and I went to home and I wrote it down and I, that, so that came early on. Yeah. I didn’t know how I was going to get there, but I was like, that’s how it’s going to end.

So

[00:23:48] Christine: your favorite part about research, is it more in person or is it. Did you really enjoy more of the Google search engine type thing?

[00:23:58] Jane: It’s all different things this one. It was there’s a lot of digitized material online from the FBI and CIA and from the NSA, and actually there’s a histo the NSA has a historical group, a historical department, and they sent me some books and files some, hard, hard books and files.

They mailed those to me a few years ago. So I thank them in the acknowledgements. They’re probably like, who is this? And and then yeah I relied a lot on online sources, but primary sources from like the FBI files and NSA and CIA. I also rely on newspapers. com is an excellent resource source.

That and also the New York Times machine is a really good resource. There’s, there was, there’s a number of books about the Monona project and these women of Arlington Hall and Meredith Gardner and Robert Lamphere. So I relied there’s, I have a couple dozen books upstairs that were also really helpful.

[00:24:54] Christine: I know Juliet had asked Juliet. Thank you for joining us. Juliet had asked, were you able to visit Arlington Hall? Is it still there?

[00:25:01] Jane: It is still there. I was not able to visit. I’m not sure. I, I looked into it. I was, time was tight. But it is now the school of foreign services.

Actually, I have a friend who’s a diplomat and it’s a, it’s school of foreign services. So it’s not really open to the public. I think that if I pushed, I probably could have gone in there, but I was able to find most of the records online. The interesting thing I didn’t mention, I should have in the presentation about the Venona project.

And all these women and men who broke these Russian codes it, they couldn’t talk about it for decades. They only declassified these records that are now available online in 1995. So there was an article I recently read about all these people who, Men and women who are in their 70s and 80s, and they’re like, we can finally tell our kids what we did like we can finally tell our grandkids.

This is what we did. This is how we contributed to history. And I thought that was really amazing.

[00:25:54] Christine: That is amazing. Now off topic of Arlington Hall. Who inspired you to become a writer?

[00:26:01] Jane: Who inspired me? It was something I always wanted to do. Always wanted to do and I really, I was so afraid of failure for so long.

I think a lot of people, a lot of women can relate to this. I was so afraid of failing that I didn’t even bother trying for a long time. And then I had my girls and I was like freelance writing and doing kind of random part time jobs and it was, I had this moment of this is like your dream.

This is something you’ve always wanted to do and like, when are you going to actually start writing? Because you have to be, with writing long form fiction, and I always say this to writers who are starting out, like you have to be bad. Before you can be halfway decent or good, like you have to put in the work and I think because it’s writing and everyone has to write to some degree people don’t think about it, like if you’re a concert pianist, you have to put in the hours and the work, if you’re a violinist, you have to, if you want to write long form fiction well, You have to put in time and it can take years and it did.

It took me years. But but I finally started paying attention to it and giving myself permission to work on fiction. And then Finally broke through with the Saturday Night Girls Club.

[00:27:09] Christine: That’s great. Which book would resonate best as a movie or a streaming series? And how would you cast it?

[00:27:19] Jane: Oh, that’s a good one. Don’t know. I was thinking about that. I think that the Beantown Girls Worldwide is still my best selling book, my most well known book. And a lot of people ask me. about that one. About who I would cast. It would be a great miniseries. It would be a great movie.

My dad would like it to be a musical on Broadway because of all the music. Which I would, I’m like, I’d take any of those. So in terms of who I’d cast, I feel like sometimes I don’t know enough young actors and actresses by name, but I really Elle Fanning. I think she would make a great Fiona, possibly.

Trying to think who else. Yeah, someone who has a real, Viv and Dottie, someone who would have to have a really beautiful singing voice to play Dottie, maybe Olivia Rodriguez or someone like that, she would be a good Dottie. Yeah, it’s tricky. I don’t know.

[00:28:11] Christine: It is tricky and it actually could be a great question out there for people to come up with their ideas.

Yeah. And so I’d love to see that in the chat. But one one final question before we open it up to everybody, because we do have some questions that we’re going to start taking is when you’re done and you’ve done, you know the end how and you’re about to send that off to your publicist and your agent.

How do you celebrate? What do you do?

[00:28:39] Jane: I sleep. I’m so lame. No. Yeah, what do I do? No, I usually Charlie and I will usually go out to dinner and celebrate or something. Or make dinner with the girls and open a bottle of champagne or, something like that. And then I sleep. It’s just, I put I, I do what better on deadlines I find, so I put myself on pretty tight deadlines, and then I am so burnt out, like I can’t even talk for a month, so we try to plan a vacation sometimes, depending on Charlie’s schedule but yeah, that’s about it.

[00:29:12] Christine: Oh, that’s great. It’s a true success to be able to say that you’re an author and you can finish a book and celebrate. So kudos to you. I am going to say we have a couple of questions out in the Q and a section and actually Bob, I think we just half answered it. Barb was asking Bob Harrington, is there any interest in making it into a movie?

This setting is beautiful and the stories for secret stealers. That’s a great question. I think it would make a great movie. Barb, we agree. Do you know anyone at Netflix? I think that’s what we need to do.

[00:29:46] Jane: Barbara. Thank you. And I would love to do that, too. I I send all my I have a friend who’s in the movie industry.

So every time I finish a manuscript, I’d send it off to him. I’m like, do what you can. What I’ve heard is that right now moving industry has been on a roller coaster since Covid and and it’s very hard to get historicals made right now. Like Marjan Kamali was on last week and. Her book, The Stationery Shop, was optioned by Netflix, and it was in process, and then was recently cancelled, and one of the reasons was because they’re putting a hold on historical.

Women of Marley Tunnel, I will say it would be less expensive than World War II books. I’m a little hopeful for that. We’ll

[00:30:28] Christine: see. Yeah, I think we can plot that. We have a great question from Rowan Quigley. Hi, Rowan. Hi, Scarlett. Hi, girls. Hello. Hello. What is the longest it took you to write a novel and the shortest time it took?

[00:30:41] Jane: The longest was Saturday Evening Girl’s Club, which took 10 years of my life. I worked at a, on a very part time basis. But but yeah, the, and a lot of starts and stops. A lot of new begin the new, the first chapter was like 20 different chapters. And then the shortest, because I was so anxious and just wanted to get the book deal was the Beantown Girls I wrote in five to six months.

That was the shortest time I had. And that was brutal. But I was like so excited to get another book deal. Then I was like, sure, I can do that. And then I was like, what was I thinking?

[00:31:18] Christine: Oh my goodness. Janice Miller, coming to us from Florida is wondering, what do you like to read, Jane?

[00:31:26] Jane: Oh, Christine, we were just talking about this last night. So I’m obviously historical fiction. I will give a shout out to some of the ones I have coming this year. So Robert Dugoni holds strong with Jeff Langos and Chris Crabtree is coming up, up, we’ll put, get those registrations up on the website as soon as Charlie gets to them.

The Stolen Queen, Fiona Davis, yay, that’s coming out in a couple weeks, and she’s coming on in a couple weeks. And then this is a really buzzy debut, I’m really excited to read, called The Lotus Shoes by Jane Yang, and she’s coming on, I believe in February so those are three historical but I read widely.

I am late to the game about with the Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes. I like Jojo Moyes a lot. I I’m listening to that on audio. And then there’s another book on audio I’m listening to. It’s a mystery called Listen for the Lie. I love a good bit. I love a ton of French. Dennis Lehane is an auto buy for me.

So yeah those are, yeah, I, but I read widely. I’m trying to listen to more books to get through more books. And, but it’s hard. I’ve talked about this like between reading for the podcast and reading for friends. It’s hard to find time just to read for fun. Yeah.

[00:32:37] Christine: It’s true.

That is a true thing. Audrey Tiedemann. Sorry if I butchered that, Audrey. How many people are in the book club today? Great question, Audrey. I think our count’s at 35 right now. But as I said, we are hybrids, so the club does have a requirement that of the 12 meetings we have a year, because we meet twice a year.

On a Friday you typically the first or second Friday of the month the requirement is they have to hit six meetings. And that can be either in person or on Skype, obviously, if it’s in person, it’s really great and fun. We meet in Milton, Massachusetts. But we do have a lot of people that just zoom with us as well.

And it’s become a very close knit family. And we do travel internationally and domestically. So I think Jane did mention in the bio that we were recently in Ireland. There was 25 of us. It was amazing. We opened that to friends and family. So that’s a great time. We had a great five nights, six days of fun prancing around the southern bit of Ireland where my father is from Bantry County, Clark.

So we were down there meeting with some authors, which was so amazing to get that experience. We were in Portugal. We’ve been in New York a few times. We’re heading to New York again with Fiona Davis. That’s going to be in May. Thank you to Lisa for all the organization and we’re going to be starting our first Club Red in the U.

S. outside of Boston. It’s going to be in Nashville. So we’re very excited to announce that with a Nashville trip coming in September. So that’s where we are for Club Red. And another person had just put in, what am I reading? We just read for our December meeting. It was the Cliffs and we were so fortunate to have J Courtney Sullivan join us in person.

That was fantastic. Few hours with her and coming up for February. Shout out to Randy Susan Myers. So we have this book coming up. And then Sorry, that’s January. And then for February, we have Matt Larson, who’s 40, 000 by 40. It’s tackling middle age in the mountains of New Hampshire. So two great locals, though Randy’s from Brooklyn originally.

And then what’s on my jacket right now is Tess Gerritsen. She’s amazing. Highly recommend. This is a great arc. I think she’s coming out in a couple months, but fabulous and special shout out to Ramey Ray, who has done a trilogy and excuse me, I don’t have the first one, but these mothers vineyard mysteries are fantastic.

So shout out to Ramey. They are hard to put down and I really enjoyed them. Oh, that’s good to know. And let’s see if we have any more questions. Oh Nancy Wilson, Nancy wants to know, how did you first get published? Was it just continually sending the manuscripts until you got the interest and snowballed from there?

And she’s asking because her nephew is a budding author.

[00:35:51] Jane: Oh so my journey to publication was a little different than than normal. So the way it works usually is you try to get a literary agent you send your manuscript or part of your manuscript to a literary agent you send multiple out, you call, you send it out what’s called a query letter with it, and hopefully one of them takes a bite and gets signed.

I tried that with the Beantown Girl, no, Saturday Evening Girls Club in 2014, it didn’t happen. 2016, and there was this contest called Kindle Scout. Some of you may have heard this story before, and it’s no longer, but you put your manuscript up online, and people vote for it. It’s like crowdsource publishing.

Vote for it to be published. I put it out there because I knew agents and editors were looking at this site for projects. Not so much, Kindle Scout, you got a digital book deal. It wasn’t really a real book deal. I wanted the real book deal, but I put it out there because I knew the agents and editors were looking and I wanted this particular editor, editorial director, Daniel Marshall of Lake Union Publishing.

I said to my husband the night I put it out out there and said that I want Daniel Marshall to offer me a book deal. And 30 days later I won Kindle Scout and a week later Daniel Marshall from Lake Union Publishing called me and offered me a book deal, which was like bananas. It was bananas. Like I still, I like burst into tears.

I could not even believe it. And and so that, so I got my agent after I got my first book deal. I’ve since. Signed with a different agent, my original agent I’m no longer with. But yeah, it’s a process. And one thing I will say when you’re a new author, you have to you have to have the whole manuscript done and it has to be as perfect as you can make it.

So yeah, just keep that in mind before you start sending it out to anyone. Get, beta readers, get some good critiquing and editing, and make it as perfect as it could be.

[00:37:50] Christine: Rowan Quigley again from Waltham does have another question. What advice would you have for somebody who wants to write their first novel?

Like I do know a lot of people like associate with groups like Grub Street. Do you have anything for the young and budding?

[00:38:04] Jane: Yeah, I think Grub Street is a great resource. I took workshops there years ago. I, because I had little kids, I’d often just take one off workshops during, on a Saturday. I never could sign up for like weekly.

There’s also a lot of online resources now too. Women’s Fiction Writers Association is an excellent resource. They have workshops things like that. I’m trying to think of other resources. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of agents and editors now on YouTube that have great YouTube series. So get a lot of good advice.

Find a good writing group that’s as serious about writing novels as you are. You want people who are help you up your game. You don’t want to be the strongest one in the bunch. You want to be at the level. And share pages. And do the work. It’s just it’s a lot of work.

And and it takes the time. But I always say publishing is persistence. And the people that I looked up to in this. industry, the authors I look up to are the ones that have stayed in the game and just gotten better and better over the years.

[00:39:02] Christine: I will say, and Alicia Ludwig has just put a little comment in a Q& A section.

I miss the names of the upcoming Happy Hour books. Can you please put them on your website? And yes, I know that you’re still, putting all that on your website. Eileen Stanton would like to know how to find more out about Club Red. I am going to ask Jane to put our Facebook group on the, And you can also find me on Facebook or Instagram.

I’m Christine O’Shea and or on Instagram. I think I’m Hey O’Shea. So please find me there and we can certainly chat. We do offer friends and family events, which is a great way to come try out the club. And then I have a question from Marilee. Did I understand correctly that the protagonist and her love interest in your upcoming novel are both fictional characters?

[00:39:58] Jane: They are both fictional characters, and they are inspired by a lot of the real women I read about at Arlington Hall, and the men I read about. At the FBI who were working there at the time. There’s a lot of really, there was a lot of good source material about these men and women to, to jump to use as a jumping off point.

And I and I really wanted to have the main characters in the story. The friends and the love interest and the main, very main character Kat, are all fictional. ’cause I just wanted the flexibility to be creative. So I’m excited about it and I hope that you all are too.

Yeah.

[00:40:34] Christine: That brings me I think we’re done with the questions, but I just want to make a comment being a book club person and working with an author. It’s really important some of the ways that we can support our authors and one of the best ways is to preorder the book. What that does, when you pre order a book, and I didn’t really know this until a few years ago, pre order is what helps elevate them to best selling status.

Believe it or not. So when an author is telling you to pre order their book, and it’s not coming out for a year, pre order the book. You’re helping them, which is very important. We need to continue to support the industry, both the book club and the authors. Everyone supports each other.

[00:41:18] Jane: Thank you. That is so you to mention, Christine.

And yes, Juliette Fay. Hello, Juliette Fay. Check out her books because they’re amazing, too. Thank you for coming tonight. She said writing reviews following authors on social media helps sharing. I, my editors always say, Jane, you can do all the marketing promo in the world, but word of mouth really sells books, whether it’s social media, you Book clubs, libraries, your local bookstores.

If you love a book, tell people. That’s what I always say. Just just share the love so that, and that’s a great way to support authors. And I think that This is a good time to wrap it up, Christine. What do you think?

[00:41:53] Christine: I agree. I agree. Everyone, hop on Goodreads and start doing, hop on Kindle, hop on everything.

[00:41:59] Jane: There you go.

[00:42:00] Christine: Jane

[00:42:01] Jane: Healy. You’re the best. Thank you so much for doing this. This was an amazing way to wrap up the year. We have some prizes for everyone who attended tonight, and I will announce them on social media, including a Club Red bag, Good Night from Paris tote, I’m going to do a signed Advanced Reader copy of the Women of Arlington Hall, and a signed copy of Good Night from Paris, so we’ll draw those all based on the names of everyone that’s here tonight so thank you again to my fabulous co host Christine, and that is a wrap.

Historical happy hour 2024. Thanks to all of you. I just have to say the podcast is now in the top 25 percent of buzzsprout, which is the platform buzzsprout podcast worldwide, and we have listeners in over 56 countries, which is amazing. We’ve got some terrific authors to kick off next year.

Like I said, including Fiona. Davis and Robert Dugoni please follow along on the podcast or follow me on YouTube and that’s a great place to write reviews as well. So thank you again, Christine. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy 2025. We’ll see you all in the new year. Thank you, Christine.

You’re the best. Cheers. Thank you everyone. Thank you. everyone to my Club Red

[00:43:13] Christine: Girls.

[00:43:13] Jane: Thank you Club Red Girls. Take care everyone. Have a great night.