I'm back! Physically, at least. Mentally, I'm still on that struggle bus. The trip was both work and not, though even if it was all vacation, I'd still have a hard time re-entering my normal life after two weeks away. I missed the New Jersey heat wave. Yes, you can be jealous.
And I had a great time! I'm writing about my adventure from the first week; the second week, I camped and hiked. Yes I slept in a tent. A real tent, not a glamping tent with a bed and assorted other items for comfort. My first campground didn't have a shower, and I can tell you that a three minute cold shower after four days of tent sleeping and hiking is the best shower around.
I spent all of it in mountains of Western North Carolina, an area of the country I fell in love with last spring when I fled there on a road trip after finishing my book. I really didn't want to come home. I think that's the sign of a good trip.
Speaking of the book (would you expect any less?) I have some more fall dates! (and some ones that have been announced too).
*NEW* August 24: Philadelphia, City Tap University City, 7pm. This is a story slam with some people way more impressive than me, including Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run. I'm telling a story called "The Spitter." I'll leave it at that so there's a little mystery involved.
September 10: Piscataway, N.J. Saturday group run for the Raritan Valley Road Runners. Run starts at 8pm at Johnson Park. If you don't want to run and just hear the book chat, get there around 9:15/9:30. I will also tell the story of "The Spitter" there.
September 21: Bryn Marwr, Pa. location of the Bryn Mar Running Company. Run start at 6pm, talk to start about an hour after.
September 22-25: Barrelhouse Writer Camp. I'm the visiting author and applications to get into camp are still open!
October 1: Collingswood Book Festival. I go on at 2pm, but if you're a morning person, there's a fun run at 9:30am (and yes I will be signing books after the run too).
*NEW* October 21: Medford, N.J. Pineland Striders meeting. We start at 7:30pm.
Recent Bylines
"Running Across America" for the New York Times
"The dangerous cost of 'free' Wi-Fi" for CIO.com
People Talk About Jen's Book
"It's the Dawn of the Female Adventure Memoir," Outside magazine
Jen Talks About Her Book
"The best place to go running in N.J.? It's not where you think," Star Ledger. I encourage you to read the story and watch the video. They're different!
"3 Ways Running Improves Your Life that Go Way Beyond Fitness," Well+Good
"Jen A. Miller–the Where's My Money Bat" for Kill Fee, a new podcast about freelancing!
"Trade journals: the book publicist's secret weapon" for Build Book Buzz
What I'm Reading
Buckle up, kids. I sucked down a lot of books while I was gone. Let's start with the audiobooks. I listen to these on long drives (for free courtesy of my library!) And yes they count, as Melissa Dahl at The Science of Us was kind enough to point out.
- My Week with Marilyn by Colin Clark. Interesting, but bordered on a creepy. It's a retelling of Clark's week-long interaction with Marilyn Monroe. I'm wondering if the movie makes it seem less so, but I felt uncomfortable during parts of this.
- Most Talkative by Andy Cohen. I don't watch Housewives or even have cable, but I thought this would be fun, and it was, with a lot of seriousness thrown in. Cohen came out during the AIDS crisis, and he was a serious news producer for CBS before joining Bravo. I get why he read it himself, but I don't know if he did his work justice. I've been thinking a lot about audiobook narrators (for something that's scheduled to run this fall HINT HINT), and why I didn't read mine. I'm not an actor. Cohen is a TV personality but not an actor either. I could tell when he went off script because he was more relaxed and natural. But still: worth a listen.
- Born with Teeth by Kate Mulgrew. Best audiobook I've ever listened to. Great story, great performance BY the writer. I started it as I was leaving Asheville and finished it as I was crossing into Collingswood. I didn't want it to end.
- On Trails by Robert Moor. I'm reviewing this one for a newspaper so I'll save my assessment for the review.
- Bury Me In My Jersey by Tom McAllister. McAllister is part of Barrelhouse, who is hosting me at their writer camp, and he had a water damaged copy of his book up for grabs, so I took it. I don't like football at all and I loved this book. I forgive him about his end of book comment about restaurants in South Jersey too.
- Night Running from Wellstone Books. These are essays about – you guessed it – running at night. As with all anthologies, some pieces are better than the others, but I enjoyed reading it.
- Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn. This is a romance mystery that I learned about through this thread on Go Fug Yourself (a site I found out about five years ago because it was cached in a browser of a public computer from a previous users. THANKS PERSON!) Anyway – enjoyable campfire reading. I'm just about done and expect I'll read more in the series, though I picked up five new books from the Battery Park Book Exchange & Champagne Bar, which is exactly what it sounds like with the bonus that they allow dogs into the store.
I gave up on Suits. Pretty people yelling at each other gets old pretty quick. So I'm onto the third season of Bojack Horseman. In my humble, non-TV critic opinion, this is the most interesting and subversive show on TV. It's so strange and weird and sad and blunt. And it's funny. I try not to do anything else while watching or I miss the jokes. It's like early Simpsons if they could be R-rated. Highly recommend.
And that's it! I have so much work to do. And my race schedule just had a wrench thrown into it (yes this matters in the grand scheme of my life!) I need to sort through all that, so here I go.
Until next time,
Jen. A. Miller
jenamiller.com
runningalovestory.com
twitter.com/byjenamiller
instagram.com/jenamillerrunner
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