January 7 question – Is there anything in your writing plans for 2026 that you are going to do that you couldn’t get done in 2025?
At the moment, I’m feeling rather discouraged about writing due to anemic reader response to my latest novel. Sales have been pathetic despite the wonderful support of this group. I wish reader response didn’t affect my motivation as much as it does, but that’s my reality.
I am enjoyinga break from writing includingthe freedom to travel, entertain, and catch up on streaming TV over the weekends.
First was a drive to Orlando to meet my friends’ poodle Franklin, then to Key Largo to join my bestie on her college swim team’s training trip, where we swam with manatees.
Then my sister, niece, and I traveled to nearby Charleston, SC to visit the aquarium.
Back home, I always have fun assembling breakfast for my niece!
Finally, I’ll host book club to discuss Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Atmosphere, a story about female astronauts, and I found this hilarious Space Cats winefrom a book club guide:
Happy December, writers! Join our monthly Insecure Writers Support Group blog hop, where we vent and lift up. It’s a wonderful community started by author Alex Cavanaugh.
(this is a blog post, not a newsletter, but that reindeer is so dang cute that I had to feature her)
December 3 question – As a writer, what was one of the coolest/best gifts you ever received?
Gifts of support have made the greatest impact on me:
🎄The Insecure Writers Support Group! IWSG is a big factor in keeping me in the writing game, and it’s been a blessing getting to know cool writers like you.A special shout out to Ronel Janse van Vuuren (today’s co-host who invited me to discuss domestic violence on her blog), Natalie Aguirre (also a co-host today, thanks, Natalie!) Louise Barbour (wonderful post), and Alex Cavanaugh for spreading the word about my new release.
🎄My self-publishing team. I’m grateful for pub sisters like Nicki Elson (Bev), my critique partner extraordinaire. I also met editor Jessica Royer Ocken and book designer Coreen Montagna through the small publisher who released my first four novels. Working with a professional editor has definitely sharpened my writing skills.
🎄The gift of readers. That old adage, “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone”? Sadly, I’m living it! Sales for my new release, Low Water, have been deplorable. I’ve heard book sales are down for many authors, but JEEZ. I guess it doesn’t help that it’s been four years since I last published. Or maybe a book about recovering from trauma isn’t commercially appealing. But I have felt fortunate whenever readers have devoted their precious time to try one of my novels through the years.
Two lives marked by trauma. One chance to rediscover hope.
In the sun-drenched Lowcountry of South Carolina, a swim coach haunted by tragedy and a psychologist devoted to healing cross paths just as their lives unravel.
He once believed Olympic-sized dreams and awful dad jokes could get him through anything, but waves of grief threaten to pull him under. She has built a career navigating others through pain, yet she struggles to confront her own.
When their worlds collide, Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD forces the question: is it possible to dive into the past without drowning? Neither expects the other to become a lifeline. But with connection and courage, they search for a way forward—one stroke at a time.
Striving, tender, and surprisingly funny, this is a story about resilience and learning that the best way out of the deep end is together.
The exciting climax of Low Water takes place on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.
Behind the scenes: Why did I write this book?
It’s been four years since I published sports romance Rivals. In the meantime, I’ve strived to help psychotherapy clients heal.
Have traumatized book characters led you to despair? Did you ever wonder, “How will they ever recover from this tragedy?”
As a psychologist, once I learned a powerful PTSD treatment called Cognitive Processing Therapy, I now feel hope that EVERYONE can recover from a traumatic event. When I read about characters stuck in trauma, I want to yell at them, “Go get CPT!”
Witnessing trauma survivors turn their lives around inspired me to write a fictionalized version. Due to my background as a college swimmer, I chose a swim coach as the protagonist. His psychologist faces her own drama when she meets a mysterious manwhile speed-dating.
~*~
Thanks to fellow author Ronel Janse Van Vuuren for hosting me on her blog to talk about domestic violence and PTSD.
Today’s question:When you began writing, what did you imagine your life as a writer would be like? Were you right, or has this experience presented you with some surprises along the way?
I started on a lark with zero expectations about life as a “writer“. The word felt pretentious and unfamiliar to me. It was simply a delight to create fictional worlds shaped by my characters’ whims. The words poured out of me without much knowledge of structure or point-of-view.
Three years later, in 2010, when a small publisher took a chance on my debut novel, I experienced a mix of imposter syndrome along with incredible support from online friends, authors, and readers. I bounced from envisioning “best-seller” status to feeling like the heel of the shoe worn by those best-selling authors.
Surprises have ambushed me from quite a few corners, like:
Finding my own voice. I used to compare myself unfavorably to other authors, and sometimes I still do. But I heard somewhere that NOBODY writes like you do, and that sentiment has stuck with me. There aren’t many psychologists/ authors (psycho authors) out there, and probably none who share my obsession with swimming, volleyball, Pinterest food creations, and curse words!
I will survive if readers don’t like my books. Reading preferences are so subjective. I’ve found that writing is just like school, work, sports, and relationships in that I perform better by focusing on the process (writing what I want to write, learning the craft) instead of the outcome (reviews and sales).
I always knew I could persevere. Swimming thousands (millions?) of laps while staring at a black line on the pool bottom, as well as my neurotic need for achievement, strengthened my sense of grit. But I never predicted that I would publish ten novels!
Which brings me to my NEW RELEASE on 11/14/25: Low Water!
Cover by Coreen Montagna
Haunted by the past. Healing in the present. Hoping for a better future. And telling cringey dad jokes along the way.
I shared my blurb last month, and it’s available on Amazon as a pre-order.Have you ever felt hopeless about healing after tragic events? I used to. But then I learned a powerful treatment called cognitive processing therapy, and I want everyone with PTSD (real or fictional) to start the therapy, stat. CPT inspired me to return to writing after a three-year hiatus.
Two questions for you, writers:
Would you be willing to publicize Low Water around the time of release day (Friday 11/14/25) on your blog or social media?
If you’d like a special blog post about trauma (sudden death, domestic violence, etc.), cognitive processing therapy for PTSD, writing about sports, or a topic of your choice, please leave your email address in a comment or email me at jenniferlanebooks at gmail.
If you want to share a social media post, here are options:
Trauma survivors, there’s hope! Combine the thrill of competitive swimming with the power of cognitive processing therapy to heal PTSD. Pre-order “Low Water” by Jennifer Lane now and rediscover strength. https://www.amazon.com/Low-Water-Jennifer-Lane-ebook/dp/B0FYV32BV4
Trauma survivors, listen up! I’m Jennifer Lane, psychologist & author. My new ebook LOW WATER reveals how cognitive processing therapy can heal PTSD. Pre-order now and rediscover hope. https://tinyurl.com/2vbzx668
What are the pros/cons of publishing the ebook on KDP Select vs. wide? Ronel Janse van Vuuren helped me try to figure out Draft 2 Digital to publish wide my novella earlier this year, but I’m still unfamiliar with the site compared to Amazon. (I’m trying to publish the paperback on D2D and don’t know how to set the margins to 8.5 x 5.5 while using my own interior pdf, for example.) I’ve had all my books in KDP Select for years, which might make more sense for romance novels, but my new release has only a side element of romance.
I appreciate your encouragement last month, fellow writers! I was able to finish my 10th novel, Low Water, in the nick of time (I hope) to have print copies published before a book event on November 1. My critique partner, Nicki Elson, has provided wonderful support, as always. I sent the manuscript to my editor today, and my book designer is working on cover designs.
Research for the climactic action scene took me to Harbour Town on Hilton Head Island, where I snapped this photo (which might become part of the cover?)
Blurbs are always a challenge, ugh. Nicki helped me craft this one:
Two lives marked by trauma. One chance to rediscover hope.
In the sun-drenched Lowcountry of South Carolina, a swim coach haunted by tragedy and a psychologist devoted to healing cross paths just as their lives unravel.
He once believed Olympic-sized dreams and terrible dad jokes could get him through anything, but waves of grief threaten to pull him under. She has built a career navigating others through pain, yet she struggles to confront her own.
When their worlds collide, Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD forces the question: is it possible to dive into the past without drowning? Neither expects the other to become a lifeline. But with connection and courage, they search for a way forward—one stroke at a time.
Striving, tender, and surprisingly funny, this is a story about resilience and learning that the best way out of the deep end is together.
I’m hoping for a November release date.
What’s your favorite dad joke? Here’s one from my swim coach character, Jordan:
What does the buffalo tell his son in the morning?
Bye, son!
I look forward to reading about the favorite thing you’ve written.
Last Update for my Novel in Progress: Low Water 88,500 / ~87,000 words
Join us for the Insecure Writers Support Group, where we share our doubts and celebrate our victories. Thanks to Alex Cavanaugh for starting (and maintaining!) the amazing group.
This is the second question of the month that involves A.I., which I know nothing about, so I’ll abstain from answering. I need to get with the times and learn more.
I finally feel some momentum with my novel–thanks to the group for your suggestions for getting unstuck! I have about 15K more words to write. I would love to publish Low Water before an author event I’m attending in Savannah, GA on November 1 (since the novel is set nearby.) It’s probably an unrealistic timeline. But the only space my editor has before February of 2026 is in early October. Therefore, I’m going for it!
If you would like to join me for a writing sprint in the month of September, please let me know.
How was your August? I visited my sister in Chicago, where we took in a Savannah Bananas game. Have you heard of Banana Ball? It’s like the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball:
We also saw the air show from a boat on the lake. *sings* Highway to the danger zone
Novel in Progress Update: Low Water 72,500 / ~87,000 words
Retired science teacher Seffi Wardwell is making herself a new home on the Maine coast. She has a flower garden to keep up to the stiff local standards, a tough job ahead breaking down the locals’ suspicion of outsiders and making friends—and a distressing tendency to find herself in the middle of murder investigations.
Edited Out blurb:
Working part-time at the local inn is fun, until everything goes sideways. When a uniformly disliked writer-in-residence turns up dead, the local police ask Seffi to use her botanical knowledge to figure out what killed her. And could she hurry up, before the inn’s business tanks, and takes the bakery down with it?
Author Bio:
Rebecca M. Douglass has lived, worked, and hiked around the American west for more years than she’ll admit, while raising two children to adulthood and dreaming up interesting ways to bump people off. Thanks to good friends in Maine, she has also spent time on the other side of the country and has fallen in love with that coast. Since retiring from work at the library, the author of the Ninja Librarian series for younger readers and the Pismawallops PTA mystery series lives in Seattle, where she is writing the Seffi Wardwell mysteries. She has also had short stories published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. When she isn’t writing, Ms. Douglass likes to go hiking and backpacking or to travel to discover new places or revisit old favorites, including the Sierra Nevada mountains, the desert Southwest, and of course Maine, where so many of the best cozy mysteries are found.
April 2 question – What fantasy character would you like to fight, go on a quest with, or have a beer/glass of wine with?
I would like to have a beer with Westley from The Princess Bride (without iocaine powder added, I hope!) Not only is Westley clever, funny, mysterious, and tough, but he also portrays an air of vulnerability that draws people to him. Most endearing is his lasting love for the princess that helps him persevere through countless adversities.
Thank you to Ronel Jansse van Vuuren for helping guide me with publishing wide for the first time, and I also appreciate fellow co-host Natalie Aguirre as well as IWSG founder Alex Cavanaugh for spreading the word!
It was nice to see the short-lived orange banner on the Amazon site for the obscure category I chose.
Novel in Progress Update: Low Water 45,000 / ~85,000 words
I’m excited to launch my second sports-romance short-story today.
Who Can Help Her Meltdown on the Pitcher’s Mound?
Fast-pitch softball is Andie Wilson’s life. She’s a fierce pitcher hoping to score a college scholarship, and she hates the annoying distraction of cocky baseball players crashing her high-school charity game. But she doesn’t anticipate the impact of one baseball player: Colt Turner. As Colt stares at her through his catcher’s mask, his steadfast gaze may be just what she needs to guide her through a crisis. And Colt may need Andie, too—to cope with the secret hiding behind his mask.
I’m grateful to author Ronel Jansse van Vuuren for featuring her review on her blog! And stay tuned to authors Alex Cavanaugh’s blog and Natalie Aguirre’s blog for spotlights.
Thank you to early reviewers Michelle and Kate for 5-star reviews!
They’ve been alive forever. They’ve been bored for some time. And now they’re showing it.
Congratulations to Ronel Janse van Vuuren on the completion of her dark fantasy series, Irascible Immortals!
Smoke on the Water
Immortals + Boredom = Catastrophe
Something old and dangerous is awake and influencing the immortals to act in ways they’d only imagined.
First, small things like Odin, Anubis and Mab going on separate vacations and leaving their seats of power open for the taking. Then, Yue Lao, Cupid, Bast, Apollo and a Kitsune messing with the lives and memories of mortals. It grows to pandemonium when Pan and Poseidon upend the world, creating the Warp – and a free-for-all where it comes to the immortals’ wildest fantasies. Especially the twisted fantasies of Baba Yaga and her Nightmares, Morrígan and her love of War, and Isis who has no qualms unleashing hell on Earth to get Osiris back, plunging mortals even deeper into danger.
Thankfully, some immortals are older and wiser than others, catching on that everything isn’t as it seems… But damage control, trying to avoid the Apocalypse of all realms, and discovering who the ancient evil is, takes more magic, wit, and sacrifice than they could’ve dreamt possible. Can the unlikely grouping of Hel, Aphrodite, Set, Thor, Loki, Apollo, Freyja, Ra and Ammit save the realms?
Scroll up to buy now and enjoy the hilarity, disaster and more that ensues when bored immortals let loose.
When I heard that each book is a 30-minute read, I needed to learn more.
Let’s talk about your creation of the series. Did I read correctly that each book is a 30-minute read? If so, how did you choose that format? That sounds unique and interesting.
I was talking to my optometrist about reading whichever series I was bingeing at the time, and she said she had like five minutes a day to devote to reading which meant that long books and series just didn’t work for her. Which got me thinking about how much punch a short story can give in a limited amount of time…
I had already written “Breaking the Habit” and submitted it to an anthology. (The first three books are featured in the “Grumpy Old Gods” anthologies.) From there, it was easy to build the world and the characters that inhabit it. Going from various gods and immortals being bored and just having a bit too much fun messing with humans to bringing about destruction was just a case of indulging my inner psychopath. LOL. I was listening to a Nightwish album and “Symphony of Destruction” came up and it just clicked: Pan and Poseidon clean up their domains, cause havoc among humans, and whatever happens next isn’t their problem.
Various gods and goddesses vied for my attention, so I wrote about the ones I’ve always wanted to write about (like Isis reuniting with Osiris).
At first, it only built to no-one doing anything to fix the Warp (the result of Pan and Poseidon’s competition) and adding to the mayhem. But after a while, I realised that I didn’t like things hanging there without any conclusion. That’s when I wrote a couple of stories to end the series and published them all together in “Smoke on the Water”. I stuck with the short format (which I recently heard is called a “mosaic novel”) so even in the collected edition, each story can still be read on its own.
Going from mayhem to fixing it, meant finding an antagonist behind it all. It was fun finding someone that is even more powerful than ancient gods like Ra. It also worked well with foreshadowing I (unintentionally) added in the first book.
We live in a world with short attention spans, limited free time, and a lot of competition for said attention and time, so we need to work with what we have.
I used my warped sense of humour, the need to focus on fixing Climate Change, and remembering that we should live and not just exist, to add different layers to this series.
It was a fun experiment in length, character POV, and world-building.
Award-winning Dark Fantasy author Ronel Janse van Vuuren writes about kick-ass heroines, the duality of being human and loves to use folklore to underscore her point.
She’s a Rottweiler pack leader, chicken wrangler and horse servant.
All of her books are available for purchase from major online retailers.
Jennifer Lane Books 