Book Club Questions - NIGHTINGALE SONGS

1. There are two stories in Nightingale Songs. The live action is in 1985. The memories are from 1944. The characters are living in times with different moral codes. In what ways do the characters demonstrate the values of their time?

2. What values remain the same from 1944 to 1985 to today?

3. Cate is a skeptic regarding all things paranormal. Are you a skeptic? If so, have you ever had an experience that caused you to question your skepticism. If not a skeptic, what are the experiences that have made you a believer?

4. In what ways does Tom's life shape Jonathan's behavior?

5. Do you believe that Kitty has been with Cate through her entire life? What evidence would indicate she was?

6. The last of the World War II generation are approaching the end of their lives. Do their youthful experiences seem like ancient history?

My Backlist Project

My backlist project flies in the face of everything I was ever taught about publishing. I developed the project by trying to figure out why I write. Certainly, as the vast majority of authors would say, not to make money. Some authors experience fame and glory. Most do not. Yet, they labor tirelessly creating. Maybe they do it for the reason I do. I just like writing.

I am lucky enough to have a publisher that I enjoy working with. Plexus Publishing of Medford, NJ, publishes my traditional mysteries featuring amateur sleuth Meg Daniels. That is an ongoing relationship that focuses on Jersey Shore settings. Over the years, however, ideas have popped into my mind for books that fall outside their focus.

NIGHTINGALE SONGS - a story of cross-generational love with a touch of the supernatural

A DEATH IN SCILLY - a traditional mystery featuring an amateur sleuth visiting a scenic British Isle

THE SECRET AUDIENCE - a historical mystery set in the US World War II homeland

Conventional wisdom would be to find an agent who might be interested in these areas, who would then contact appropriate publishers.  Even at best, that could turn into a lengthy process. 

There are a few publishers who will accept unagented manuscripts. I have had a few great experiences (which did not lead to publication) with a couple of these publishers. If a book isn't what they are looking for, it doesn't matter how much praise they heap on it. If it doesn't fit their market niche, they won't publish it. 

All aspects of this process take time, and time is a luxury I no longer feel I have. I'm not breaking any bad news here. I am simply old. I am not about to launch into a lengthy effort to get these additional titles published. I would only want to submit to publishers that accept manuscripts directly, review them in a reasonable amount of time, do not require the completion of a lengthy questionnaire, and promise to respond. (See note below.) Depending on the publisher's focus, those numbers can vary--from zero to a few. Independent publishing gives authors--and readers--more options. And, it allows titles to become available much more quickly.

I like these books. I am proud of these books. They're not doing anyone any good lying around on my hard drive. I'll try to inform potential readers about them in case they might enjoy them. Maybe I'll even become proficient at more of the steps that independent publishing requires. If readers find these books and like them, I'll be very happy. And if they dont? Doesn't matter. I'll just keep writing.

NOTE: I hear many tales of authors waiting for responses on submissions they sent to either publishers or agents and receiving no response at all. Ever. Often, the recipients have noted that because of the volume of submissions they get, they might not respond to every submission. Most often, these manuscripts were required to be submitted through an electronic system. I wonder how limited an organization must be that it can't manage to include in its system a single button that generates a standard rejection letter--not to show appreciation for the writer's effort, God forbid--but for the practical reason that the author can move on. I know publishers hold all the marbles--and as long as people dream of being writers will continue to--but what's up with that? 

© Jane Kelly 2025

Maybe it's my attitude

If you don't define a social life as dating, I've always had a great social life. If you define having a social life as dating, not so much. 

I didn't usually bemoan this situation, but for some reason when I lived in New York, I reacted when the newspapers featured stories about a new anchorwoman who came to town. I read an article about how she was dating John Heard (the father in Home Alone). Now, I never had a thing for John Heard. I didn't want to date John Heard. Nonetheless, I mumbled to myself that I'd never meet John Heard. It was the principle that annoyed me. 

I put down the newspaper and headed to LaGuardia to catch the Eastern Shuttle to DC. I wasn't an early boarder but I could find an aisle seat about five rows back, my usual spot.  It was Sunday. The plane wasn't full. There were only two people in my row. Me in the aisle seat and, across the aisle, a man in the window seat. John Heard.

That was when I realized perhaps fate wasn't what was holding me back.

© Jane Kelly 2025

The Tilt-A-Whirl and Me

When I was in my early twenties, I spent quite a few summers at the Jersey Shore. My friends and I didn't often ride the amusements, so the times we did stand out. Especially one particular night, one of those nights you might want to forget but somehow you never can.

We were a fairly large group who shared a house in Sea Isle City. A large group with varied culinary skills. The night in question, one group cooked an African cuisine. Another group cooked something less exotic and less memorable but no less spicy. We all shared every dish. 

As soon as we finished dinner, we ran out of the house and jumped into the hearse that one girl's boyfriend drove-very cool at the time--and headed for the Wildwood Boardwalk to ride the "big rides."

You may see where this is going.

The first ride we ran to--and I recall we ran--was the Ferris wheel. Now, to call this amusement a Ferris wheel is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, it was a big wheel. And  yes, it had individual cars. However, the wheel tilted as it rotated and the cars, actually cages, spun and flipped. All at the same time. We bad no idea what was up and what was down. Today I cannot imagine the amount of money it would take to get me on that ride. But back then? We jumped on eagerly and got off feeling fine.  And ran to the Whip. 

Now, the Whip was an amusement that my mother deemed too rough for little me, possibly because she was aware of the concept of whiplash. However, I was no longer a little girl and my mother wasn't there that night. So, we leapt into a car and let the ride, without the benefit of seatbelts, jerk us around like crash test dummies testing the effects of forty-mile-an-hour car crashes. We loved it.

Thinking that we should take our riding down a notch for a break, we ran to what I thought of as the calmest, most soothing amusement: the Tilt-A-Whirl. There were no bright lights flooding the ride that sat on the edge of the pier with a lovely view of the ocean barely visible in the moonlight. Even though there was erratic spinning involved, the overall mood was calm. I leaned back, breathed in the sea air, and gazed out over the ocean. Everything changed in an instant. At least for my stomach. I'll get to the point. I threw up in my lap.

I was very considerate and had extraordinary aim. The car did not have to be hosed down. I, on the other hand, did. I won't paint a picture. I'll let you visualize a twenty-something woman being hosed down beside the Tilt-A-Whirl. The teen-aged operator didn't seem non-plussed. Apparently, it happened. 

I tried to find out if amusement parks still have hoses near rides. The answer I got was some do especially near particular rides. Want to guess the first ride on the list? The TILT-A-WHIRL! Now they tell me.

© Jane Kelly 2025

My Third Summer

A post I made on Facebook recalled that my mother refused to spend any more summers in a beach house saying, "Everyone else gets a vacation and I just move my job."

My family had been spending summers in Wildwood Crest for at least a dozen years by the time I was two and a half. Oddly enough, the rental house was paid for by my father's job. Every executive at his company got a summer house in Wildwood Crest. I don't know why. The only explanation I can offer is: it was the fifties. (Aside: At some point my father's perks included a car but I recall stories of my father taking the bus down from Philadelphia for weekends in the early years. Why give someone a house but not a car to get there? Maybe that's why they eventually threw in the car.)

Anyway, back to my third summer. That was not an easy summer for my mother, mainly because of me. I came close to death several times. Not sure why. I got something--no one is still alive that would know what-- got misdiagnosed, was medicated incorrectly, and lost the knack of breathing. Most of the time my father was at work in the city. My mother was alone at the shore without a car which in a way didn't matter because she couldn't have driven it anyway. 

The story of that summer was always told to me in a casual way. Nothing to see here. "Mother used your illness as an excuse to stop spending summers in a rented beach house." Decades later my brother apologized to me because he would get scared and hide. I swear he said under the bed. I think Rick was expecting too much of a twelve year old boy. Until he told me that, I had no idea of the impact my episodes might have on the rest of the family. 

I don't think I fully grasped the seriousness of the situation. The story was related as "Hey, remember when Janie almost died?" I knew a summer neighbor had driven my mother and me to Philadelphia. That was serious. But one story my sister told me when I was in my fifties made me understand.

Rosemary was old enough that summer to remember my mother scooping up a limp baby and running out of the house yelling, "Help me. Somebody help me. My baby's dying."

Wildwood Crest neighbors helped and, spoiler alert, I didn't die. 

As a kid, I was disappointed we no longer went to the shore for the summer, but hearing that story makes  me understand why my mother never wanted to be in that position again.

The silver lining was after we stopped going to the shore, I became a 'friend.' You know, the kid parents always took along on vacation to keep their own kid out of their hair. I was a 'friend' up and down the Jersey coast line. So, when it came time to write murder mysteries set at the Jersey Shore, I had fond memories of a wide variety of towns. This was important because it did not seem plausible that a body would wash up on the shore of let's say Ocean City on a regular basis.  

Ironically, the town I have fewest memories of is the town where I might have spent the most time. Recently I have been back. I don't expect to recover old memories but I might get to make some new ones.

© Jane Kelly 2025

Mother's Love of Somewhere Else

The one thing I always understood my parents didn't agree on was travel. He didn't care if he went anywhere. She didn't care; she would go anywhere. 

My father was a devout Catholic but my mother liked to say he wouldn't walk to the corner to see the Pope pass by. That was an exaggeration. He'd walk anywhere. It was getting him into other conveyances that posed the problem. 

She did manage to talk him into a car on occasion. I believe the longest vacation was to Cape Cod which I suspect she probably finessed by positioning the trip as a treat for their pre-teen daughter (me) who had a crush on the very cute President from Massachusetts (JFK). The longest add-on I recall was to Niagara Falls which she insisted was just around the corner when we dropped my brother off at Cornell. In her defense, it was only 165 miles from Ithaca to Niagara Falls. However, although there were interstate routes available, I don't recall being on any. Guess who was in charge of the map?

My father was a good sport about road trips. When they opened the Cape May-Lewes ferry, they were there within the week. When they opened the Chesapeake Tunnel/Bridge, they were there within the month. The voice in Field of Dreams that said, "If you build it they will come" was talking about my mother. But only if my father drove her. She never got a license.

She did fly with my father on the occasional business trip but, until my brother moved to Bermuda and sent my parents plane tickets, I don't think she ever got farther than Chicago or Boston. But I am sure she was happy to go to those cities. They were somewhere else. 

Not all business travel involved planes.  At one point my father's job required him to visit twenty-two small towns in eastern Pennsylvania. Scranton was the biggest. My father only had to start a sentence, "Would you like to take a ride to . . . ." She'd be in car. I rode along and she would make the day a special occasion. We were going to the best place on earth. Somewhere else.

My mother raised me to think travel was the most important thing in life. My only goals in life involved being somewhere else. Living in different cities. Traveling to different cities. I got to do both. Probably in excess. She did not.

Sometimes when business travel got exhausting, I would feel as if I was doing it for her. My mother's daughter would never spend a night at the Tokyo airport on a layover. No, I took the bus to the Imperial Hotel (she loved hotels) and got up early on a Sunday morning to spend a few hours touring Tokyo. When dragging myself through the Imperial Palace Gardens, I believe I actually spoke aloud when I said, "Can I go home now, Mother?" But the effort was worth it if for no other reason than when asked if I've been to Japan, I get to say "yes, but only for the day." 

My mother would have approved of my day trip to Tokyo. She might have been a bit jealous. We suspected she even envied my brother's Army deployment to Korea (not the tourist destination in the early sixties that it is now).

My sister actually came up with a solution to my parent's travel issue. For their 25th wedding  anniversary, "we" gave them a cruise to the Caribbean and South America. I think in the end, they both enjoyed it. She got to go to new places and he got to sit in a deck chair and read. I think if they had lived into retirement, cruises might have resolved their issue. Sadly, they didn't.

What I Learned from the Murder Channel 1

True crime is having a moment.  One could think of the assortment of true crime books, TV shows and podcasts as trash entertainment, and many do. But I think they can be viewed as educational. And, even though I make light of the topic, I am not kidding. (I am not going to discuss the comfort watching crimes getting solved can offer to those who suffered the consequences of criminal acts that have not be solved. That is far too serious a topic.)

For me, my affection for true crime stories started with books by Ann Rule, expanded into Discovery/Investigative ID television and landed in the world of true crime podcasts. Once I started writing crime novels, I viewed them as professional reading and viewing. Yes, consuming all the true crime media is one way to do research, but for me it also confirms that what I am writing is, sadly, not outlandish. People harbor secrets, put on facades, and do horrible things. Which brings me to the educational aspect of true crime and thoughts of things I would have done differently after consuming all this media.

Back in the 1970s, I stopped to see a friend in Denver on a cross-country drive. I went along with her to a meeting of recently divorced men and women and accepted a date with one of the few male members who it later turned out had never been married. Unlike me, he had not accompanied a friend. Today, any viewer of what I like to call the Murder Channel would have seen that as a Red Flag. I wasn't worried. My friend didn't know the guy but others in the group did. It seemed like a safe decision. Not so safe that my friend didn't feel the need to get his fingerprints on something when he came to pick me up. We thought that was funny. 

I'd never been in a car with a gun rack in the back, but I don't recall there being any rifles in it. I'm not sure I would have worried if there had been. I was an East Coast girl discovering life Out West.

We were in suburban Denver so going to a bar in a Holiday Inn that featured entertainment didn't seem that unusual.  The date actually went pretty well for a while. Until, as the cliche goes, it didn't. I don't think I had to ask to be taken home. He was happy to get rid of me.

I only remember one moment of the ride back to my friend's house. We stopped for a red light. It was the 1970s. There was nothing around. He pointed to a police car monitoring the intersection and said, "This is your last chance. You can jump out of the car and run over to get help or," he changed the direction of his finger and pointed into blackness, "I'm going to drive you that road and murder you."

My response? "No, you're not." I stayed put.

Spoiler alert: he did not kill me. 

But, he could have. I know that now. Thanks to the murder shows.

© Jane Kelly 2025