Featured Author Francine Garson

Featured Interview With Francine Garson

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’m a true Jersey girl! Although I’ve moved around a bit, I’ve spent most of life, and currently live, within a twenty minute drive of my beloved New Jersey shore. With grown children in New York and Chicago, these days I live with my husband, a mellow orange rescue cat named Simba, and many, many books.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I’ve been a lifelong reader, and I was blessed with a mother who encouraged my love of books. Every couple of weeks, with my sister and me in tow, she made the trek out of our small (one square mile) town to the old Victorian house that was the county library at the time. I still have vivid memories of climbing up to the third floor of that gingerbread house kind of building and carefully choosing the three books I was allowed to borrow from the children’s section.
I won my first writing contest at the age of ten with an essay entitled ‘What Thrift Means To Me.’ Although I’m no longer an expert on that particular subject, I guess budgeting my weekly allowance was enough to make me an authority back then. But, a few years later, I put my writing dreams aside and went to college, graduate school, and pursued a career in college administration. I never stopped reading though, and reading, and reading some more. Then, ten years ago, I began to write seriously. And surprising even myself, a number of my short pieces of both fiction and non-fiction were published and even won awards. So today, I realize that those first few years of serious writing as well as a lifetime of insatiable reading were…preparation…the preparation that I needed to do in order to write my debut novel, ‘Things’.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I don’t know that I can pick a favorite author, but I usually read character-driven books with strong plot elements. I’ve recently loved ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ by Celeste Ng, ‘Do Not Become Alarmed’ by Maile Meloy, ‘Small Great Things’ by Jodi Picoult, and ‘Beartown’ by Fredrik Backman. My favorite books are those that make me think long after I’ve finished the last page. I hope that my own book, ‘Things’ will do that for its readers.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
‘Things’ is the story of Jenny Gilbert, who to everyone who knows her, is a successful young college counselor. But secretly, she is also a collector, some may even say a hoarder. As a former military brat, she is on a mission to find and reacquire the many relics of her childhood that she was forced to leave behind with each of her family’s moves, and she has rented a secret second apartment to accommodate her growing obsession.
When Jenny reconnects with Nick, a man from her past, a romance begins. But, as she tries to hide an increasingly complicated web of secrets from the man she’s falling in love with, she becomes enmeshed in a messy tangle of omissions, half-truths, and lies. Then, when Hurricane Sandy adjusts its course, aiming itself directly at both of her apartments on the New Jersey shore, Jenny finds herself catapulted into a truly desperate situation.
At its heart, ‘Things’ is the story of a young woman searching for a sense of rootedness, a sense of home. But, she needs to learn that amassing physical things is not the way to find it, and that what she seeks is not an external thing at all. Her quest is aided, as well as complicated, by Nick’s arrival and the looming threat of the most destructive hurricane in New Jersey’s history.
‘Things’ grew out of my love for the New Jersey shore coupled with my own feelings about the catastrophe that was Hurricane Sandy and my personal experience as a college advisor. It is often said to write what you know, and those are things I do in fact, know about. But, unlike Jenny, I did not grow up in a military family, and I am much more of a minimalist than a hoarder. So, I subscribe to another bit of writerly advice…Write what you WANT to know. Write what you can IMAGINE. And do your research!

Connect with the Author on their Websites and Social media profiles

Francine Garson’s Website

Francine Garson Twitter Account