Jane Heller

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author

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“Mainly Jane” Lives!

April 26, 2018

 

I know, I know. It’s been forever since I posted here. Forgive me. I kept meaning to, and this post is swiped from the newsletter to subscribers I mailed out recently so it’s sort of cheating, but life continued to get in the way of a real post. The big news is I’m moving. (Gulp!) My husband Michael and I sold our house in Litchfield County, Connecticut, an area we love and intend to visit in the summers, but we didn’t love winter in the Northeast. At first we thought we’d try being snowbirds and spent the past five months in St. Petersburg, Florida. It turned out St. Pete is fabulous! The beaches and Gulf of Mexico are gorgeous, no surprise, but it’s the downtown area that blew us away. What a vibrant, lively, culturally rich, “hip and happening” place! From museums to restaurants, St. Pete is walkable, easy to navigate and right on beautiful Tampa Bay – plus my Yankees play their spring training games right across the Bay in Tampa. We were captivated and decided to make St. Pete our primary residence. Next month, we’ll be moving into a condo overlooking the Bay until we figure out where to buy. It’s on Snell Isle, just over a charming bridge from downtown, and the view from our place is spectacular. I’ve never been a “condo person,” having lived in houses since my youthful apartment years in Manhattan, but I’m looking forward to letting someone else handle maintenance problems, not to mention making new friends down at the pool.

The view from our sixth floor balcony

National Women’s Health Week in D.C.

But life won’t be all sun and fun and tennis (I’m playing again after a long layoff). In the middle of our move, I’ll be taking a quick trip to Washington, D.C. to participate in National Women’s Health Week. Invited by Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, whose mission is to enhance the health of people worldwide through its support of medical care and research at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem, I’ll be speaking on a caregiving panel on May 16th as part of Hadassah’s Women’s Health Empowerment Summit – a huge honor for me. Hadassah will promote my appearance by selling copies of You’d Better Not Die or I’ll Kill you: A Caregiver’s Survival Guide to Keeping You in Good Health and Good Spirits. I’m excited to be on a dais with many well regarded experts in the caregiving field, and I hope I can spread the word about how essential it is that caregivers take care of our own health as well as that of our loved ones. Having a husband with a chronic illness and a mother who suffered from dementia, I know whereof I speak. If you’re caring for a loved one with a chronic or progressive illness, please do check out the book and please take care of you!

A New Book on the Horizon

As for my next book, it’ll be nonfiction and it’ll be a kind of a bookend to the caregiving guide – i.e. it’ll deal with what happens after the caregiving ends. The subject of death and dying is in the zeitgeist these days, and I intend to tackle it with the same candor, humor and personal storytelling I deployed for You’d Better Not Die. It will focus on my mother – our relationship, my sense of loss when she “disappeared” from my life and, here’s the biggie, whether those who’ve passed on are still with us in some form. The book will explore my efforts to communicate with my mother after her death and explain how others can connect with those they’ve lost. It will detail my spiritual and emotional journey in the tradition of books like Wild and Eat, Pray, Love, and I can only hope it’ll find as wide a readership as those narratives did.

My mother and I at my wedding in Ridgefield, CT

A Beautiful Day

Speaking of weddings, Michael and celebrated our 25th anniversary this past fall by having a very informal renewal of our vows at our Connecticut house. It was just the two of us and a photographer, but it was very special. I ordered the same bouquet, headpiece and boutonniere we wore 25 years before, and we exchanged moving words of love and commitment. Tears were shed, but there were laughs, too. A beautiful, beautiful day for us.

Scenes from our special day

A New Romantic Comedy

And finally, for those asking for another romantic comedy, yes, there will be one. I love the genre, always will, even as it falls in and out of fashion. So whether I bring back Elaine, Jackie and Pat from Three Blonde Mice and Princess Charming or come up with a totally new set of characters and hijinks, my goal will be the same: to entertain and take you away from the daily grind.

And while I’m on that subject, there are rumblings from Hollywoodland that two of my romantic comedies are drawing movie/TV interest again. Nothing concrete to report, but I’ll shout from the rooftops if there’s a deal!

Meantime, stay in touch by emailing me, visiting my web site or reaching out on Facebook and Twitter. I love hearing from you.

More next time!

Jane

Filed Under: Mainly Jane Tagged With: caregiving, D.C., FL, Hadassah, Health Empowerment Summit, Mainly Jane, National Women's Health Week, romantic comedies, St. Petersburg, Washington, You'd Better Not Die or I'll Kill You

News about THREE BLONDE MICE!

March 21, 2016

ARC ThreeBlondeMice_cover_5-5x8-5.indd

Yup, we have a cover for my new novel, which Diversion Books will publish in August. Why the heart of carrots? Because my “three blonde mice” heroines, Elaine, Jackie and Pat, have taken a farm-to-table vacation together in this sequel to Princess Charming, the book that sent them on a seven-day Caribbean cruise. This time they’re at a farm resort in Litchfield, CT – agritourists on a “haycation.” They not only milk a cow and make cheese from the milk, but they spend the week taking cooking classes with a famous farm-to-table chef. Here’s Diversion’s descriptive copy:

Elaine Zimmerman and her best friends Jackie Gault and Pat Kovecky venture to a farm in Litchfield, Connecticut. It’s been over a year since their last trip together, a Caribbean cruise aboard the Princess Charming, and after dealing with a murderous ex and his hit man, they’re yearning for a no-drama vacation this time. During their Cultivate Our Bounty Week, they and eight other guests will learn how to cook farm-to-table meals with Whitley’s artisan-inresidence, a renowned TV/restaurant chef named Jason Hill. Elaine, the jaded, neurotic narrator, is less than thrilled—especially because the program wasn’t supposed to include a surprise appearance by her former boyfriend Simon, who’s still the love of her life but can’t commit to her. What’s more, after milking a cow and making cheese, she stumbles on evidence that one of her fellow agritourists is out to murder Chef Hill at the resort’s Bounty Fest finale. Is the killer among the freakishly fit Manhattan couple who takes their devotion to organic, hormone-free, non-GMO food to the point of obsession? The grandmother from Wisconsin who’s a groupie of the celebrity chef and follows him to every event? The mother and son from Palm Beach who bicker over whether he should give up his law practice to open his own restaurant? Three Blonde Mice serves up a crackling romance between Elaine and Simon, a twisty whodunit involving a screwball cast of suspects and a satire of current food fads and the farm-to-table chefs who perpetuate them.

Needless to say, I’m very excited that the book is in the promotional pipeline. Now that I’m back in CT, I’ll be doing local publicity as well as national. I’ll post much more in the coming months, but I’m happy to say that Three Blonde Mice is now available for pre-order on Amazon!

Meanwhile, Diversion has just reissued five of my backlist novels, including Princess Charming, with pretty new covers that tie in nicely with the Three Blonde Mice cover. Check them out!

Princess Charming_coverLARGE

 

Clean Sweep_coverLARGE-2

 

The Club_coverLARGE

 

Crystal Clear_coverLARGE

 

Infernal Affairs_coverLARGE

Filed Under: Mainly Jane Tagged With: agritourism, chefs, Diversion Books, farm to table, foodies, haycation, mysteries, novels, Princess Charming, romantic comedies, Three Blonde Mice

Holiday Sale on Ebooks!

November 27, 2013

booksStarting December 3rd, the ebook editions of the following 11 of my novels will have a new lower, very sweet price just in time for Christmas, New Year’s and into 2014! They’re going from $4.99 to $2.99 in an effort to make them more affordable for a wider audience. I do love these stories and I continue to hear from readers who are discovering them for the first time, as well as from those who go back to them for a re-read whenever they need a smile.

So….on 12/3, look for price reductions at all e-tailers (Amazon, B&N, Apple, Kobo) on Best Enemies.…

thumbnail.best enemies

 Clean Sweep….

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The Secret Ingredient…

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Female Intelligence…

thumbnail. Female Inteligence final revised_255x191

The Club…

thumbnail.the club

Sis Boom Bah…

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Princess Charming…

thumbnail.princess charming

Name Dropping…

thumbnail.name dropping

Infernal Affairs...

thumbnail.infernal affairs

Crystal Clear…

thumbnail revised Crystal Clear_Heller_thumbnail

Lucky Stars.

thumbnail revised Lucky Stars_Heller_thumbnail

The novels aren’t part of a series and they aren’t the stuff of serious literature, but they’re smart, sassy romantic comedies with an element of suspense (sometimes there’s a murder, sometimes not), and they’re all about relationships, whether between a couple in love, a pair of sisters or a mother and daughter. And they’re all meant to take readers away from their daily grind and offer up some laughs. There’s never been a better time to try one!

Filed Under: Humor, Mainly Jane Tagged With: ebooks, fiction, Jane Heller, novels, reduced price, romantic comedies

Winter Sale!

February 4, 2013

White sales are great and shoe sales are nice and who doesn’t love discounts on merchandise of any kind. So why not have a sale on my ebooks? February 1st kicked off our special “Winter Sale” on my 11 novels that were launched in ebook editions over the summer. For a limited time only, we’ve dropped the prices from $4.99 to $2.99, so there’s never been a better time to curl up with a Kindle/Nook/iPad and read.

Thanks to those who’ve been fans of my romantic comedies and have been spreading the word to others. And to those who’ve never read one of my novels, I hope you’ll get started!

 

Filed Under: Mainly Jane Tagged With: Best Enemies, Clean Sweep, Crystal Clear, ebooks, Female Intelligence, Infernal Affairs, Jane Heller, Lucky Stars, Name Dropping, Princess Charming, romantic comedies, Sis Boom Bah, The Club, The Secret Ingredient, Winter Sale

SAG Awards, Huff/Po, Ebooks & My Mother!

January 28, 2013

I always look forward to the SAGs because they’re all about the actors without cluttering up the presentation with technical awards (not that the costume, wardrobe and sound people don’t deserve theirs; I’m just more interested in star gazing). But last night’s show was oddly flat. Even the intros featuring the “I’m an actor” vignettes weren’t all that charming or funny, and aside from Julianne Moore there really weren’t any actresses wearing unfortunate gowns. (The top of Moore’s gown was definitely a SAG winner, if you know what I mean.) “Argo” is suddenly piling up the awards and should make the Oscars even more competitive. Daniel Day-Lewis and Anne Hathaway appear to be the only locks.

Switching gears, I had a post up on PBS’ Next Avenue site last week and Huff/Po50 picked it up over the weekend. It amplifies a chapter in You’d Better Not Die about caring for a loved one whose illness causes personality changes and what we, as caregivers, can do about it. I should mention that I’ve been posting a lot on Huff/Po and elsewhere, and all my posts, caregiver related and not, are up on my web site under “Other Writing.”

The big news in terms of my romantic comedies is that after successfully launching 11 of the novels as ebooks over the summer, we’ve decided to have a special “Winter Sale” starting February 1st. For a limited time only, we’re dropping the prices on all 11 from $4.99 to $2.99 to say thank you to those who’ve expressed interest in them. I’m excited to be able to share the novels with even more readers, so it’s a great time to jump in.

And finally, I haven’t posted here in a while because I had the pleasure of a two-week visit with my mother, who turned 96 on January 15th. She and Sandy, her caregiver, flew out to California from New York and we had a great time together, hanging out, re-connecting with family members and enjoying some wonderful dinners here in Santa Barbara. Very sad to see her go home but looking forward to her visit next year when she turns 97!

 

Filed Under: Fashion, Mainly Jane, Movies, Popular culture, Wellness Tagged With: caregiving, ebooks, Jane Heller novels, romantic comedies, SAG awards 2013, Winter Sale, You'd Better Not Die or I'll Kill You

Four More Novels Go Digital!

July 17, 2012

Last week, I had the pleasure of reporting that six of my backlist titles were finally available in ebook editions. Today, I’m here to announce that four more novels have been converted and are available at e-tailers: Lucky Stars, The Secret Ingredient, Name Dropping and Princess Charming.

That leaves only Female Intelligence, which should be joining the others in a few weeks.

Very exciting for me to have these books in their new editions with their colorful covers and reasonable prices. Spread the word!

 

Filed Under: Humor, Mainly Jane Tagged With: ebooks, Jane Heller, Lucky Stars, Name Dropping, Princess Charming, romantic comedies, The Secret Ingredient

Sneak Peek At My New Ebook Covers

February 16, 2012

As the Pointer Sisters used to sing: “I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it!”

The reason for my excitement? The launch, possibly as early as next month, of the brand new ebook editions of my 11 novels that have been out of print and, therefore, never before available as ebooks.

The novels have gotten a facelift too, thanks to extremely talented designer Lilien Hoffman, who has created both a colorful look for my “brand” as well as eye-catching images for each book.

Want to see what will be appearing on an Amazon or BN.com page soon? Scroll down for a sneak peek…

 

Are these covers gorgeous or what?

Filed Under: Confessions of a She-Fan Tagged With: Best Enemies, Clean Sweep, Crystal Clear, ebooks, Female Intelligence, Infernal Affairs, Jane Heller, Lucky Stars, Name Dropping, novels, Princess Charming, romantic comedies, Sis Boom Bah, The Club, The Secret Ingredient

"Larry Crowne" – Euwww

July 3, 2011

No, I didn’t go see it. Why would I? The trailer says it all: bomb.

http://youtu.be/uS155D2HlwY

Apparently, it actually is a bomb, doing extremely weak business this holiday weekend. Should we be surprised, given that the movie pairs two mega-stars? And it’s being billed as a rom com that even grownups can enjoy.

No surprise. Here’s a bulletin for Universal: I’m a grownup but I happen to enjoy rom coms that have the following:

  1. Actual chemistry between the two leads (I can’t even stand the thought of these two kissing).
  2. A story that doesn’t defy credibility (two extremely rich movie stars playing down-and-out characters can be tricky, especially if one of them has already done the dumb thing in “Forrest Gump”).
  3. Snappy dialogue (“Brain freeze” is a line the studio picked for Julia Roberts to say in the trailer? Really?).
  4. At least one or two fresh twists on the standard formula (not just she hates him in the beginning).

My fear is that Hollywood will go, “Look how that movie bombed. Let’s forget rom coms and grownups altogether and just make ‘Transformers’ and ‘Hangovers.'” Please no.

 

 

Filed Under: Mainly Jane, Movies Tagged With: Julia Roberts, Larry Crowne, movie, romantic comedies, Tom Hanks, Universal

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About Jane Heller

Jane Heller is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her fourteen breezy, witty novels of romantic comedy and suspense are now entertaining millions of readers around the world, along with her two books of nonfiction.

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