← Living The Next Chapter: Candid Conversations with Authors and Writers for Readers Searching for a New Read
Living The Next Chapter: Candid Conversations with Authors and Writers for Readers Searching for a New Read
E705 - Jane Loeb Rubin - I run like the wind to stay ahead of my disease - living, family, writing - my refuge
00:46:12
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- [00:00]
A
You know, that's why I write historical fiction, is that I want people to understand where we come from so that we can appreciate the learning that went on and the enlightenment and also to create some guardrails into the future so that when we find ourselves getting into an. An area that is going to create more separation and distrust that we think back to how. How much the same we all are.
- [00:40]
B
Everybody, welcome back to Living the Next Chapter. It's the author podcast. We get to talk to great authors from around the world. Jane is here today. I'm super excited to have her on the show. Lots of great things we can talk about. She got some great stories to share with you as well. I'm on her website while we're chatting. It's gorgeous. It's a beautiful website. Everyone else to go check it out. We'll have links for that in the show Notes. Jane, welcome to Living the Next Chapter. Glad to have you on the podcast.
- [01:06]
A
Thank you for inviting me.
- [01:08]
B
Excellent, excellent. It's good to have you here. I like to start here with all my guests because we have listeners around the world. We might have listeners right where you are in this great world of ours. So tell everybody. Jane, where. Where do you live? Where do you. Where are you in this great big world?
- [01:22]
A
Well, I have our home in Marstown, New Jersey, which is in north central New Jersey. And I've lived in this part of the country most of my life. So I'm an east coaster.
- [01:38]
B
Excellent. Well, we're fellow east coaster, so we have that in common too. I like that a lot. That's great. Awesome. Jane, talk a little bit about your writing background. When did you start writing like it was really something you wanted to pursue. Kind of what got you into this?
- [01:55]
A
I started writing towards the back end of my career as a healthcare executive. I had always been very interested in medical innovation, but it really was a cancer diagnosis that kick started the process. In 2009, I was diagnosed with an ovarian cancer that was connected to a genetic defect. And it came as a great surprise because I knew I had the defect, but I had my ovaries out. And so it started in a sort of next door neighbor, Oregon, but it was ovarian. And so I initially wrote a healing memoir in an essay format that addressed where strength came from in my family. And it's a series of essays and it's called Almost a Princess. And and then I went back to work. I was getting treatments that were holding the disease at bay. I was only 55. I really wanted to finish out my career. And so I went back to work and for another 10 years. And I was starting to get a lot of fatigue from the drugs that I was being given and was encouraged by my medical. It's almost like a medical committee that had been handling me to take it easier and to relax. So that's not an easy thing for a type A person to do. And I'm very type A. I will begrudgingly admit it. And. And so I needed something that felt purposeful to me. And I was already raising money for ovarian cancer research. And through that, it led me to my great grandmother Matilda, who was the most distant carrier of this genetic mutation that eventually I and my several of my first female cousins inherited. And so I thought about her a lot and what it was like in the late 1800s to have cancer. And I decided that I'd take some writing classes and learn how to write a historical novel. And so that kernel of desire and decision led to two book deals that I just completed. The fourth book, and it's based all on her family. It's fictional, but it takes her family from the late 1800s through World War I. And the book that's coming out in June, Mayhem in the Mountains, is going to take the family into 1924 during Prohibition.
- [05:05]
B
That's interesting, because when we talk about medical care in the 1800s, how much did they know what cancer was back then to what we know now? Like, did they.
- [05:18]
A
Yeah, very little. They saw it as a local disease.
- [05:21]
B
Okay.
- [05:22]
A
They didn't understand that it needed at some point to be treated systemically, which is a treatment that goes through the whole body head to toe. And. And the surgery was brutal, so it was awful. And. And as far as ovarian cancer, they saw that as some type of venereal disease because it affected the reproductive organs. And so, I mean, these poor women, they died at home on laudanum, a painkiller that was used at the time. And it was lonely and shameful and just horrible for these people. And so those thoughts really plagued me about my poor great grandmother Matilda. But in the book, she has breast cancer because the mutation expresses as breast cancer and also ovarian. And so I. And in men, prostate cancer. And so it does affect men also, but not as. As much and as. With the same frequency that women seem to experience. So I just. I just had to honor her in some way. So the first book, the Red Bear, this is a cover? Yeah, I. I donate my royalties to the research fund. So I wanted to generate cash flow that would support the fund. But the Fund has raised $83,000 now. That's pretty good. And, and so that's what started it all.
- [07:10]
B
So it's historical based, what you're writing, but fictionalized. Right. You've been taking some liberties with the story. How much history did you have to do for research for preparing for this?
- [07:24]
A
That's. There's always some smart person in the audience when I speak who asked me that exact question.
- [07:31]
B
I'm a smart person. Okay, I'll take that.
- [07:33]
A
Yeah, you're the smart person in the audience. And what I typically do is I spend about three months just reading and I guess doing general research on the time period. So I know who's president. I know what the economy was like. I mean, my, my research is New York City primarily.
- [07:56]
B
Okay.
- [07:57]
A
So, you know, I knew about the gilded set up in northern Manhattan. I knew about the immigrants. And so I spent about three months getting into the research looking were facts that most people do not know. And those facts, I think are what lend a lot of interest to historical fiction is that people learn more than they came out of school with. And so I look for that and I research until I come up with an opening scene. And as soon as that hits me, I kick into writing gear and I continue to research the rest of the time. Because as I'm writing, I have a lot of questions. I need to know what people ate for breakfast. I need to know if people went out to eat. I need to obviously know what they wore. I do a little research on that ahead because fashion plays into history in a big way, especially in a female centered book. But I had to know when a ballpoint pen was discovered. When did they stop writing with feather pens? And you know, there's a lot of detail that goes into setting the history. Right. And in Threadbare, the first book, I needed to understand the garment industry and when sewing machines were made and how that disrupted the industry and so on and so forth. So the, the, and then I do fact checking. So when the book is completed and I'm finished editing it, I go back and I just check things that I don't remember verifying because somebody out there is going to catch me on something.
- [09:50]
B
Right? All of those.
- [09:51]
A
And also most, most historical fiction writers have an author's notes section in the back of the book. I, I do that where I twisted vax or I took liberties with a company because I wanted them to be a villain and they really weren't the villain, but I made that up. And so I apologize in the back, I also put in a bibliography because I find that a lot of readers who are interested in historical fiction are also interested in learning more about a time period. So I have, like when I wrote in the Hands of Women, which is about OB GYN and the beginning of the 20th century during a period of time where women had zero reproductive rights and there were a lot of back alley abortions. And it was real tough, tough scene. But I really wanted to make sure that I had the actual historical facts correct because that book, I wanted. That book, by the way, is still my top seller.
- [10:59]
B
Really?
- [11:00]
A
Yes, because I think it was kind of when women's rights and the suffragette movement was really driving, really driving forward at a fast pace. Women were getting really angry about their lack of rights, certainly not being able to vote. But it affected their family lives, their education, their inheritances. It affected so many things. And I think it just has a lot of historical lessons in it that are cautionary because we could return to that so easily. I mean, it was so conservative and. And I don't think that there are a lot of people who appreciate the history and where we. How far we've come.
- [11:58]
B
Yeah.
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A
And why. And the why is probably the most important thing, I think.
- [12:03]
B
I love a books like yours for bringing those topics to the forefront because people, some people just have no idea how we got to where we are and the danger of taking our foot off the gas pedal, moving forward, and we start sliding backwards. Right.
- [12:19]
A
Oh, my goodness, yes. And women are, you know, we're 50 of the population and yet we're so vulnerable. And, you know, no one talks about taking rights away from men.
- [12:30]
B
Right.
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A
You're right.
- [12:32]
B
You're right. That's right. Right, exactly. The other part about writing historically is, for you, there's. There's medical knowledge as well. There's certain types of medicine that was available at that time of. In that context, there was. There was knowledge they didn't have that you can't leverage in telling your story. So you really gotta be careful you're not using 20, 25 knowledge for a story based in the 1800s. Right.
- [13:00]
A
When I start writing these books, I literally live in that time period.
- [13:07]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [13:08]
A
I dream in that time period. I, you know, even though I get up and get dressed and have a modern coffee maker and a washing machine, and I never for a minute stop thinking about what my characters would be doing when they were making breakfast or when they had to do laundry, laundry in the tenement buildings of New York was lugging water upstairs to a bathtub that 90% of the time was covered by a piece of plywood and used as a countertop.
- [13:44]
B
Wow. Right?
- [13:45]
A
Yeah, it is. It's a big wow. And how just resourceful people were to get ordinary things done that we do so quickly now. The book, though, the third book in the trilogy, takes the medical members of the family into World War I. And this was published in June of 25, and it's called Over There. And Over There is a book about the medical people who helped out in World War I. And the Canadians certainly were involved fighting with the British in France. And it really wasn't until the last 18 months of the war when Americans joined up as a fighting force. They had been there from the beginning with the ambulance service and Red Cross, but they weren't soldiers. By the time they came over as soldiers in 1917, they were really introducing and learning a lot of what we call modern medicine today. The ambulance services, they had X ray at the front. I mean, that was the first war ever to have an X ray machine and. And blood transfusions. And I mean, it was really remarkable how they answered the call to modern weaponry. Like a machine gun.
- [15:13]
B
Yeah.
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A
So. So that book really took my knowledge sort of to its limit. And I did a lot of research on medicine and the state of medicine during World War I. Yeah.
- [15:25]
B
It's amazing how an event like that can have such an impact on medical knowledge that even today we're still seeing the benefits of the stuff they discovered back then. Right.
- [15:38]
A
They either had discovered it or they took something that was barely being used and began using it as conventional medicine and. And really took trauma care up like 100 notches so that so many more. When you compare that to like civil War in the United States, a much higher percentage of soldiers survived the. The trauma because of all of those innovations.
- [16:11]
B
Yeah. I'm sad that we needed a global event like that to bring knowledge forward, but it's interesting to see that there's something positive from a very dark time in our history.
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A
Most of the soldiers didn't even know what they were fighting about.
- [16:27]
B
No.
- [16:28]
A
They were just fighting to support their country. And it was really fascinating, I mean, getting into the letters that when I research, I get to peek in to the personal side of the war. It becomes very granular and it makes it very personal and real and interesting and very heart wrenching, too.
- [16:53]
B
Yeah. So you actually got to see some personal letters then from family members and stuff.
- [16:59]
A
They're in the army archives.
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B
Yeah.
- [17:02]
A
As a matter of fact, it was on the Immigration side of it. I mean, there's a lot of very interesting discussion topics around that war. And one of them had to do with the fact that 20% of the US army were made up of immigrants from Europe, and they were disproportionately represented in the army. Like they were. 4% of the US population was Italian, and 13% of the army was Italian, and 3% of the population was Jewish, and 6% of the army were Jewish. So that immediately triggers the why? Question in me. Why were they so willing to risk their lives? And there really were two main reasons. One was that they loved being Americans because they came from a place that was way worse. And even though the streets were paved in gold, they. They did have the ability to protect their families. And you think about, like, the Maslow's hierarchy and psychology, and the bottom is safety and, you know, survival. And that was where they were existing in Europe at the very bottom. I mean, very frightened peasants came from Europe to New York. And during a generation and a half, they were able to educate their families, they were able to find meaningful employment. And even though they stayed in silos in their cultures, the war broke the walls down because these soldiers came together to fight. And I'll explain that in a second. But the second reason that you had this influx of immigrants who were registering for the service was that they were eventually given a fast track to citizenship if they served. So they wanted to become citizens, and they were. So, you know, like, if you get a disproportionately high percent of immigration, you get a real burden on your social systems. And so I think that the rest of the country, particularly New Yorkers, who were paying for a lot of the social services, really felt that the immigrants should do their fair share in the service, and so they stepped in. But what was interesting, and it'll get us back to the letter that I saw, is that General Pershing knew that he needed to deal with this immigrant population differently than the boys from Ohio. And so he created these training camps where they had to learn English and they were not allowed to be vetted near someone from their ethnic group. So they were forced to use a common language. And by the time they finished training and left on the ships to go to France, he had created a functional platoon for each of these groups. And that's what led to the letters that I share in a lot of speaking engagements, because I just thought it was so profound. And it was written from an Italian soldier who grew up in lower Manhattan in the Italian neighborhoods for people in The United States. They'll think of Mott street in Little Italy. And the. You know, all these immigrants, they. Their stories were the same. It didn't matter whether they were Jewish or Italian or Chinese or. Or Greek. They all had the same. Same experience, but they didn't all trust each other. And so they huddled together, spoke their own language, and didn't cross into anybody's neighborhood. And so this soldier was shot. He had been. They were told to advance. He comes out of the trenches, he runs onto the field, and he gets shot in the leg. And he falls down, and he rolls over and looks up, and there's a German soldier with a bayonet about to spear him. And all of a sudden, the German soldier falls down, and he looks over, and it was his Jewish bunk mate from the neighborhood two blocks over in Manhattan who he never was allowed to venture into. And so he writes this letter from the hospital to his mother saying, I'm okay. Don't worry about me. I'm going to. You know, I'm not losing my leg. I'm going to come home in one piece. And by the way, you know, that neighborhood we weren't allowed to go into.
- [22:21]
B
Right.
- [22:21]
A
You know, whatever the soldier's name was saved my life. And now he's more of a brother to me than my two brothers at home.
- [22:29]
B
Wow.
- [22:30]
A
You know, and what that symbolized was the dissolving of some of these walls between immigrant groups and their real assimilation into American life. You know, we talk about how we are a mixture of the world in the United States, but that after the war. The war really facilitated that assimilation, and people went into businesses together who had known each other in the service and had completed. We trust in each other because they watch each other's backs, and they came back and they were friends for life.
- [23:17]
B
Right.
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A
And it may have been a little bewildering to their parents, but that was the new America.
- [23:24]
B
Yeah. It's a great. That's a great story of those soldiers and how one saves the other. That's. That's. That's a good story. I like that. I think it's a good. It's a great example for how we live in 2025, 2026, as well. Right. Hearing these stories and how people take care of each other.
- [23:44]
A
It's aspirational.
- [23:45]
B
Yeah, right. It's. Well, I would hope somehow. I don't know how it would happen, but I'd hope somehow these stories would influence the future. Right.
- [23:55]
A
You know, that's why I write historical fiction, is that I want People to understand where we come from so that we can appreciate the learning that went on and the enlightenment, and also to create some guardrails into the future so that when we find ourselves getting into an area that is going to create more separation and distrust and that we think back to how much the same we all are.
- [24:35]
B
And also, not only within our own countries, but the fact that countries came together, U.S. and Canada together, fighting together side by side, didn't really matter what was on your uniform as far as a map or like a flag.
- [24:50]
A
That's where my background as a healthcare worker really comes in handy. It gives me a perspective of what's underneath. The skin is all the same.
- [25:04]
B
Yeah.
- [25:04]
A
And people when. When they're hurt or when they're sick, they behave the same way. You know, maybe there's some cultural influence, but fear is fear and pain is pain. And, you know, we're way more alike
- [25:21]
B
than different, and we need to embrace those things. That's why I love having authors like you come on and talk about your stories, because it creates an atmosphere for readers where they can. They can kind of come in and learn about the time period and see it through a fictionalized story, but also learn something at the same time. There's a message under. Behind your words.
- [25:42]
A
Right, right. And I mean, I love historical fiction myself. I. I do a lot of reading of historic historical fiction. And, you know, different authors will pick. They'll. They'll have a certain angle about what they write about. Mine is, even though my story lines are not all medical, like my next book, Mayhem in the Mountains is. I'll tell you about that one's really a lot of fun. It's a, It's a fun book compared to over there because over there is more serious. Mayhem is a fun ride. But my angle is medicine over the history of the United States. I know historical fiction writers whose pivot point is around jewelry and others about women who were forgotten, who had played such important roles in history and, and bringing them to life. Some are, you know, it's very interesting how people have a different angle that they work around, and it, I think, reflects both their interest and also their skill.
- [27:04]
B
Interesting. I like that. I'm a huge history person, so anytime I get to talk to an author that writes with that perspective, I'm always in. Just enthralled with the conversation. Anything to do with history is something that I love to read as well. So I'm right there with you.
- [27:22]
A
Well, so there's a reason behind why I've written each book over There since we've been talking about war. I had two grandfathers, my mother and my father's fathers, who father fought in World War I and they were Jewish soldiers. And my father in the Next generation and his two brothers fought in World War II. And my father was in the Pacific, his two brothers were in Europe. And none of them, the five of them never spoke about it. They would talk about it. They would cut off questions from any of the children. They wanted us really insulated and protected from the horrors of war. And as a result, of course, I was curious as hell. I just wanted to know more. And my father would shut me down. And so when I finished in the Hands of women, it was 1909, and I had a third, I had another two book deal. And I thought, oh my goodness, what am I going to write the third book about? So I took a look at all the things that were happening that happened in the second half of the decade. And of course, women got the vote at the end of the decade. World War I, the Spanish flu. And it took me to World War I. And I thought, you know, I. I really need to challenge myself to write a book about war. War is a human behavior that goes back to antiquity, and yet it is so awful. And people get so destroyed and families are destroyed and their spirits are destroyed, and yet we don't stop doing it. And so I thought, I need to understand it. But the only way I could go into a story is really through the medical people, because the politicians, the soldiers, it just. I can't. That doesn't resonate with me in a way that I could build a story from the same way as the doctors and nurses. So that took me into over there. But Mayhem in the Mountains four came very naturally because the war was over. I had my survivors go back to Sullivan county in New York, where the chicken farm and thread bear got relocated. So this book, first book, yeah, Tilly Father raises chickens in Harlem. And then of course, Harlem, New York gets developed and all of those farms get displaced. And any of them go to Sullivan county, which is just north of the city, into the Hudson Valley area. And so a couple of my characters decide to go and settle there and just get out of the city and be someplace calm. And it's not calm. The bootleggers are coming up and down from Canada to New York City. There's Dutch Schultz as his own distillery that's underground beneath a turkey farm in Ulster County. And then the Ku Klux Klan came up. And that was, that was a surprise nugget. When I was doing the research, the Klan came up from the south to try and drive the immigrants out.
- [31:03]
B
Interesting.
- [31:04]
A
Yeah, really interesting. So the. And it was very. It had a huge impact on my writing because here I had. Was going to develop the story around booze, and it ended up really becoming a lot about. About what this country stands for and what we're willing to put up with. And so the clan becomes a real pivot point in the book.
- [31:38]
B
An unintended pivot point. Right. You didn't intend that.
- [31:42]
A
No, but once I realized that they were there, I was just opening the stories still and reading more articles. And I'm thinking, what the clan. And part of the reason that we don't know it is because the governor of New York at the time drove the Klan out. He basically put an end to it. He said, not here. Take us somewhere else. Yeah, that's not what this state's about.
- [32:10]
B
Yeah, see, that's. I love how you can pull all these pieces together that seem unrelated and they all feed into the story and
- [32:17]
A
help the story tangled everybody together. And I was going to call it. I was going to call it Hat Trick because there were three elements that had to get one.
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B
Okay.
- [32:33]
A
And I thought, wow, it's. You know, I had kids who were big hockey fans, and yet Hat Trick has a second meaning. It means having three consecutive really good things happen in succession, and not necessarily goals, but there were three things. And I was working from that for a long time. As I was writing the book, there was a family issue. There were the bootleggers, and there was kkk. And I figured, well, these things are going to braid together and then get resolved. And then people started saying, people aren't going to know what a hat trick is. My age group, my readers are like, well, what's a hat trick? And then I thought, well, I'm going to define it in the inside cover. And then I thought, no, no, you can't have a title that you have to define for people. I gave it up and I called it Mayhem in the Mountains, because that's where the Catskill Mountains are. That's where the Borscht Belt was later built. Those farms became hotels. And a lot of Jewish people in the 50s, 60s and 70s would vacation there because they were not welcome at a lot of other resorts. So they made. There were Greek resorts and Italian resorts. There were. A lot of the immigrant groups did parallel things exactly the same. It's so interesting.
- [34:10]
B
Yeah. Which is almost counter to your story earlier about how the cultures kind of came Together and work together. Now you're seeing it almost the opposite happen as well.
- [34:19]
A
Well, they still, you know, they still, like, we're comfortable with their own people. I mean, the Italians and the Jewish people are so similar, but. But they do have completely different religions.
- [34:31]
B
Yeah.
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A
And the religions and the depth of belief in those religions, I think keep people on their turf. Except for those, maybe in my kid's generation who are. I mean, there's so much blending in that generation.
- [34:51]
B
Yeah. Exciting. So for your readers, who would you say, Jane, would you have in mind then, as your ideal reader, who are you writing towards? Because I want to make sure we lean into that as an audience member, because we're listening to this conversation going, I know somebody's going to love your books. So if you could kind of describe that ideal reader who.
- [35:12]
A
I have broken it out because I'm very analytical and I have a marketing background, and I try really hard to understand who my audience is the way that I. There's a few segments, people who like historical fiction in general. So that's. That's a big audience. That's any age, any gender over there. A lot more male readers are reviewing that book because I think it's a war book. And three of my main characters are men.
- [35:48]
B
Yeah.
- [35:49]
A
The first two books, I think, are more nostalgic about family stories of immigration, of the shreds that people remember. So definitely my age group, probably going down to the 40s. People in their 40s, probably more women. Definitely not, you know, people who like sci fi.
- [36:19]
B
Yeah.
- [36:20]
A
Intense mystery.
- [36:22]
B
Yeah.
- [36:22]
A
There are mysteries in my stories, but they're not what I call mystery by genre.
- [36:29]
B
Okay.
- [36:30]
A
Definitely people who are interested in medicine.
- [36:34]
B
Yeah.
- [36:34]
A
My. I was. One of the books of mine was selected for a very large system in New Jersey that had a book club of 800 people. And as part of their human resources services, they would buy books for everybody in the book club and then zoom in the author to have a discussion. And, boy, that was really fun. Wow. But they, you know, they really loved the medical bend. So those. Those are the different groups that were. I think most. That most of my readers represent. I. I sell more books on Kindle than I do paperback, but I think that's a trend in the market.
- [37:25]
B
Yep.
- [37:28]
A
However, I do run specials on Amazon and, you know, because authors also compete with libraries where you can take out books for free. And we love libraries, but we have this love hate thing with libraries because we, our publishers want us to sell books.
- [37:49]
B
Yeah.
- [37:50]
A
And so I will run very, very inexpensive Kindle books. On Amazon and put it on social media just because it's probably less money than the gas you spend going to the library. And so, you know, why not support the author?
- [38:12]
B
Smart. Let's talk about your website, Jane, as well, because I want to send people there, we'll have a link in the show, notes, they can go right to you. But I'm seeing something, I'm seeing a bunch of great links across top of the page. One I definitely would love for you to talk about is the Matilda Fund. But talk a little bit about your website as well.
- [38:28]
A
Okay. Well, one of the ideas I had when I retired was to create before I thought I'd write a book was to create this sort of all purpose resource for people who were retired where they could find books to read and Netflix shows to watch and read, like an essay or blog about retirement and things that I've learned. And it moves, morphed. Once I wrote the first book, it morphed into my author website. Okay. And. And probably one of the most important things that I do, way more important than sell books is. Well, first of all, I have an ongoing treatment for my disease. So I try real hard to stay alive. Yeah. And I avail myself of a lot of new therapies and drugs that have come out to treat cancer. And those drugs come out because there are funds that support research in cancer. And so for me, on a humanistic level, I. Matilda is named after my great grandmother Tilly, that was her official name, is, is a fund that's linked to a national fund, the Ovarian Cancer Research alliance and headquartered in New York. And they allow fundraisers like myself to have my own front facing account, which means I have this little room that I can call my own and announce things and share things and people who make a donation to my fund, the Matilda Fund. Every dollar goes through a back door into the accounting department at the ocra.
- [40:28]
B
Nice.
- [40:29]
A
At the other account. And that money is used to fund researchers in cancer centers around the country and abroad. And so it drives a lot of innovative research and, and it's very exciting. And I've had that account now for well over a decade. It raised $83,000. 75,000 of that was spent on a trial at the Mayo Clinic. So I keep the total that I have raised in my front page. But the money, money doesn't stay there, it's passed through. And I have a lovely relationship with the people at the ocra. And I had told you before the show that my granddaughter had a cookies and cupcake fundraiser and raised over a thousand dollars before Thanksgiving. Very, very proud of her. And all of that went through into the mother fund and that took us me up to 835 and I, I'm like so proud of her. So my, my, my website has tabs. There's a bunch of stuff on the books and discussion questions for book clubs. There's my events page that shows what's coming up and then I have past events and I do a lot of zooms because the world is big.
- [41:59]
B
Yeah.
- [41:59]
A
And, and then I have certainly a page on my bio. I don't have many secrets. I mean I'm pretty much an open book. And I also like to inspire other cancer survivors like myself to not lose hope because so much. I mean I didn't know that. I see my 16 year old granddaughter grow up. I mean she was, my daughter was pregnant with her when I was diagnosed and now I have a whole truckload of grandchildren and a wonderful family and it's just a joy to me. But I do have spare time and I do watch a lot of period drama and crime drama. I like that. And so I put a list of it. I try and update it periodically and I update books that, that I've enjoyed on that same page. I do facilitate a book club and do do that on the side for payment and enjoy. I probably could facilitate another book club or two without getting crushed time wise. And. And then of course my blog and Matilda.
- [43:20]
B
Excellent. All the information's there. We'll have a link for everyone to come and check it out. It's a beautiful website by the way as well. Well laid out. It's nice.
- [43:28]
A
The century. The Brooklyn Bridge is in the background and yeah, my web editor was. Well her contact information is on there for anyone looking for somebody to help develop a web. She's lovely, reasonable and helps me out in a pinch when something's not working.
- [43:48]
B
That's great. Jane, thank you so much for being on the show for sharing these great stories with us. Yeah, I hope you continue to keep writing and keep sharing because we need these great stories to remind us of where we came from, to teach us lessons or remind us of lessons we should remember and treat people better in the future as well.
- [44:06]
A
And Dave, we need people like you too to get the word out there. You're, you're kind of where the information channels through into the, into the listeners. And thank you very much for your openness to invite me on the show. I've really enjoyed it.
- [44:23]
B
Excellent everyone. All the information for Jane, her amazing books, all listed her website. And if you can, please also consider donating to. To help women and through cancer research and everything. Jane, I love what you're doing, and I love that it's having impact on human beings because of your kindness and your willingness to share stories. So thank you for being part of the show.
- [44:48]
A
Have a wonderful holiday season.
- [44:50]
B
Excellent. Thank you, Jane.
- [44:52]
A
All right, bye. Bye.
- [44:56]
B
Hey, thank you so much again for pressing play. As you've heard, great guests on the show, and one thing you didn't hear in this conversation is what? What did you not hear? Think about it for a second. That's right. Not a single solitary commercial for a mattress or a supplement or a. Whatever you call it. No. Why? Because we don't want to break up the conversation with commercials. So the fact that you're still here means that you are a fan of the show, I'm assuming. So if you want to help to keep the podcast going and to make me feel really happy, all I really care about is coffee. Okay. I just got to be honest. I love coffee. I'm drinking one right now. Starting to get cold. I need. I need to warm it up. Helping us with our Buy me a coffee link over@livingthenextchapter.com and also in the show notes helps kind of keep the lights on around here. Remember, I'm doing this for free. I. I'm paying for everything, so I would love to have a little coffee donation. You know, even five bucks kind of fills up my cup. And I would love to enjoy a coffee from you. So if you're interested. Again, thank you for listening, but you can use our buy me a coffee link and fill up the cup. Thanks for being here.