On today's episode, we will chat with Jenn Bouchard, speaking with us from the Boston suburbs. Jenn has been teaching high school social studies for 23 years and is the parent of two teenagers. After completing a major volunteer position as the president of her college's alumni association in 2014, she had the out-of-the-blue idea to write a novel. Not having written anything fictitious since middle school, she had no idea what she was doing. Three years later, she had completed a draft of FIRST COURSE. After many edits and a few bumps and detours, it was ultimately published in 2021 by TouchPoint Press. From 2020-2022, five of her short stories were also published by literary magazines. Her second book PALMS ON THE CAPE only took six months to draft, as Jenn found a system of writing that works for her. It will be published this summer. She is getting ready to self-edit her third novel CONSIDERING US before passing it along to her trusted chief beta reader, one of her closest friends from growing up as a military brat. She plans to begin work on a fourth novel this spring.

Jenn is a member of the Women's Fiction Writers Association and Grub Street, a writing center in Boston. She is also a part of the Every Damn Day Writers and Bookish Road Trip Facebook groups, as well as the Author Collective, a small group of women writers who are dedicated to supporting each other in their writing careers. She has found being a part of the community of authors to be one of the biggest surprises of her life, as she never really thought about the friends she would make along the way. She is very grateful for them.

You can learn more about her on her website, jennbouchard.com and follow her on Instagram at @jennbouchardbos - which is the best place to learn about the upcoming publication of PALMS ON THE CAPE.

Get your copy of FIRST COURSE at your favorite bookseller or through links at https://linktr.ee/jennbouchard

A little about today's host-

Shawna Rodrigues left her award-winning career in the public sector in 2019 to consult and publish her first novel Beyond the Pear Blossoms. Her desire to connect and help others led to the launch of her podcast The Grit Show shortly thereafter. When she learned women host only 27% of podcasts, her skills and passion led to the founding of the Authentic Connections Network. She now helps mission-driven entrepreneurs better connect with their audiences by providing full-service podcast production and through a community for Entrepreneurs & Podcasters – EPAC. Podcasting is her primary focus, so she continues to support the writing community through this podcast, and her writing time is mostly focused on anthologies.

She offers a free 7 Steps to Perfect Your Podcast Title to anyone interested in launching a podcast. You can also follow her on Instagram-@ShawnaPodcasts, and learn more about the network and community at https://linktr.ee/37by27.

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Learn more about our hosts, the guests we've had, and their books -

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[00:00:30] Shawna: She recently completed the draft for her third novel, a romantic comedy called Considering Us. Reader's favorite said that Jen Bouchard is a gifted storyteller with a beautiful writing style. Her books are set in coastal New England and have a strong food focus. Always leaving reader hungry for more, which we've gotta love and I'm a huge fan of New England, so I'm very excited for today's conversation.

[00:00:56] Jenn: Thanks, Shawna. I'm excited to be here.

[00:01:01] Jenn: Oh, well, it's very interesting and unusual because it's not really from anywhere. Um, I was . I really don't feel like I have strong roots anywhere. And uh, that's because I was a Navy brat. I was actually born in Connecticut, but my parents weren't even living there at the time. My dad was under the ocean in a submarine, at an undisclosed location when I was born and they'd been living in South Carolina, in Charleston, and my mom went back to Connecticut to the town where she was from, to her parents' house.

[00:02:00] Jenn: So, um, my, whole high school experience was disjointed. I did spend two years in, uh, Washington State on the other side of Puget Sound from Seattle, and that was my favorite place we lived when I was grow. growing up.

[00:02:18] Jenn: it, it was tough. Oh, it was, it was certainly tough, but I did, I really did like it there. I mean, it took some time to get used to it, but it was absolutely beautiful. We were renting a house that was on a bay and I could look out my bedroom window and. See Bainbridge Island and, and then just beyond Bainbridge, I could see the Space Needle.

[00:03:19] Jenn: And, , I wanted a small school, and that's where, a lot of the small colleges were. And I wanted something just really different than where I was living. And when we went to Maine, I was like, I love it here. This is, it kind of reminded me a little bit of the northwest. So, um, I think that's, you know what, what drew me there and ultimately I fell in love with Maine.

[00:03:43] Jenn: Hmm, laugh really hard. Um, you know, I'm a teacher , so I teach high school students and you know, there are these little things that happen on a day-to-day basis that, you know, are just kind of funny in the moment. A student totally misinterprets something that you want them to [00:04:00] do or you know, they, something happens where, they mess something up and they really stress out about it. And I'm like, this is the last thing you need to really get worried about, you know, and we'll figure this out. So I think I laugh at those sorts of things all the time. I have two teenagers well they're, they're almost 16 and almost 12, and their interactions with each other are very funny and I laugh at them all the time. My son was help. My son who's older was helping my daughter with her math homework tonight cuz I'm not good at that. And, um, , no, and, and just kind of the way they interact with each other. My daughter uses a lot of like old time expressions, which are kind of funny, like she says. Shucks.

[00:04:56] Shawna: Well, there you go. Well, the right teenagers, I like this. I [00:05:00] wanna hang out with your kids. This is the right kinda teenagers to be hanging out with. I don't know if all of all teenagers are like that,

[00:05:07] Shawna: Yes, exactly. So the, you just finished your third book, which is so exciting.

[00:05:18] Jenn: Oh, that's such a good question. Um, you know, I think. I really, I developed this kind of best friend side character. Her name's Tamara, but she goes by Tam. Um, at least that's what the main character Devin calls her and she sort of becomes Devin's moral compass. And, she also kind of comes into her own during the book as well. and she's a newswoman, which is, you know, certainly not like anything I've ever done, but I just, I, I, I liked writing about sort of her evolution as, as a person, but while also sort of being the go-to of the main character who's going through just, you know, so many messes in her own life [00:06:00] and I think at different times I've been that for, for some friends, um, just kind of the person that they go to and the check in and, and am I, do you think, you think this is the right thing to do?

[00:06:22] Shawna: Yes. Cause they're kind of like the fun, instead of it being like the focus and they don't have as much plan for them, so they can kind of be, you build in different ways for them. That's so exciting. And so this book is more the romantic comedy, right? Kinda fun to write that differently then.

[00:06:59] Jenn: I mean, of [00:07:00] course you're gonna have the emotional journey of the, of the main character and all that, and that's just naturally what, what sort of happens. But I wanted, I wanted to feel free to have the relationship be the centerpiece of the center point of the story, while also putting in these just really outrageous moments, things that happen that seem ridiculous, but ultimately could happen.

[00:07:30] Shawna: Oh, that is the best. That is the best. As do all of your books take place in New England?

[00:07:50] Jenn: And then all the way, you know, up a little bit further to Camden and Rockport and Rockland, those areas which are really beautiful. And so that's where that book was set. The second book, which will be [00:08:00] published this summer Palms on the Cape, is set on Cape Cod. Um, it's primarily in Dennis, which is on the Bayside of the Cape.

[00:08:28] Jenn: It's set at a fictitious boarding school, just outside of Portsmouth. And, there are some little, little side trips to some places, but it's, it's mostly in that area. And I'm starting to cook up ideas for a North Shore, Massachusetts one, but I haven't pinpointed the exact location yet, so we'll see.

[00:09:02] Jenn: Yes, there is. Um, so the first book, it's definitely all about like, feeding your family, feeding your friends, getting through tough times through, through coming together, you know, over food memories, over food, all that sort of thing. The second book, Palms on the Cape is about the, um, up an upscale beach bar owner named Rachel. And, she is, she does have, culinary training and, you know, she's built this business that is on the edge of ruin based on this, because of this one group of guests who come in one night from the time they visit, everything changes, and she is at risk of losing everything she's built.

[00:10:04] Jenn: And she really feels like she has no choice, even though she has absolutely no idea what she's

[00:10:23] Jenn: I had not written anything in the fiction realm since probably middle school and I was in, I was in my. Gosh, at that point I was, you know, in my mid thirties and, I was, I just finished a major volunteer position. I had been the president of my, um, alma maters, uh, alumni association for two years.

[00:11:01] Jenn: And, my kids were still really little and you know, certainly I'm a teacher, so I was certainly busy in a lot of ways, but I, I definitely felt like I had this hole. And we were at the beach, we were actually on the north shore of Massachusetts at a really nice beach called Crane Beach in Ipswich.

[00:11:38] Jenn: Um, just about kind of, you know, your creativity and things like that. I went to see Richard Russo, who's one of my favorite. When he came to Portsmouth. But one of the most interesting things I did was I went to see Lisa Genova speak and she wrote still Alice and a number of other books. And she's a Bates College grad.

[00:12:10] Jenn: She could not get Still Alice published, she was selling books under the back of her car. Um, finally she got, she said, cuz she self-published it. She finally got noticed and it did get picked up by a major publisher eventually, but my husband was at the event with me and we were just like, well, you know, There's a path here.

[00:12:47] Jenn: It took me two and a half years to write a first draft. I had really no idea what I was doing, um, but, you know, did it and then was like, all right. Kind of worked through it for a year. And ultimately, linked [00:13:00] up with an instructor from Grub Street, which is a writing center in Boston. I hired her to look at my query letter and my first few chapters.

[00:13:25] Jenn: So, um, you know, we kind of developed a little bit of a system for, for moving forward with, with these books.

[00:13:41] Jenn: Um, it's jennbouchard.com. It's Jen with two Ns. Um, and that's my website. And then I'm on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. All at Jenn Bouchard, BOS for Boston. And I'm even dabbling with TikTok right now. It is. Really [00:14:00] strange. I'm mostly just posting pictures of food I'm making at this point.

[00:14:10] Jenn: I love going to hear authors speak and so, the authors I relate to the most, who write things I think that are most similar to what I I write and what I really enjoy, I would say Jennifer Weiner and Ellen Hildebrand and I have gotten to go. See both of them.

[00:14:53] Jenn: Um, because she walked in and I said, it's you. And she said, it's me. [00:15:00] And that's how I met Jennifer Weiner. Um, and then she ended up signing my book and wrote to my bathroom companion. So I have that forever, which is awful.

[00:15:09] Jenn: And then I, real quick, oh, it just meant Ellen Hildabrand in an event a couple weeks ago and she was amazing. So...

[00:15:19] Jenn: thanks Shawna. This was so much fun.

[00:15:25] Jenn: You too. Thanks so much.