Category: Women Who

The “Celebrations Book Club by Cheryl’s Cookies” welcomed bestselling British suspense author Lisa Jewell. During the virtual roundtable discussion, Jewell delved into the mysteries of her latest novel, The Night She Disappeared, with host Claudia Copquin, founder and producer of the Long Island Litfest.

Lisa Jewell is a New York Times bestselling author of 19 novels, including The Family Upstairs, And Then She Was Gone, Invisible Girl, and Watching You. Her books have sold over 5 million copies internationally, and her work has been translated into 28 languages.

But that is a far cry from where she was in 1995, when she was a 20-something, down-on-her-luck unemployed secretary with just distant dreams of becoming a writer. “Like so many people do, I had this vision that, one day, I’d like to write a novel, but in my head it was something I would do when I was middle-aged,” Jewell said during the Celebrations Book Club by Cheryl’s Cookies virtual event. “I thought only middle-aged women wrote novels, not young women like me, particularly not ones that are secretaries. I thought I’d have to go off and live this grand life first before I’d be allowed to do that.”

Evolution as a novelist

Jewell had just turned 27, was recently fired from her job, and was away for a getaway. After a night out, her friend dared her to act on her aspiration to become a writer, promising Jewell dinner at her favorite restaurant if she was able to get three chapters down on paper. Jewell not only met the challenge but sent what she had written to literary agencies. That turned out to be the start of her first novel, Ralph’s Party, which would go on to become the bestselling debut novel in the United Kingdom in 1999.

Jewell’s first novels were romantic comedies, but as she moved into her 30s, got married, became a mother, and lost her own mother, her priorities shifted. She no longer had the same interest in writing about young roommates living the single life, so she moved into the suspense genre.

Her latest work

The Night She Disappeared follows her psychological suspense style. Set in a lush English village, the story revolves around Zach and Tallulah, teenage parents with a less than ideal relationship. After a rare night out together, the couple disappears and Tallulah’s mother is left to pick up the pieces. She is tasked with raising her infant grandson alone, all while grieving for her missing daughter and trying to solve the mystery of her disappearance. A tangled web of personalities emerges from the incident, including Sophie, a mystery writer who, by chance, uncovers clues regarding the couple’s whereabouts through an ominous “Dig Here” sign.

When host Claudia Copquin asked her how she came up with this storyline, Jewell said that she doesn’t start her writing knowing where the story is going to go. Instead, she thinks of the things she’s “keen” to write about. In the case of The Night She Disappeared, those elements were three things: a boarding school setting, the mysterious “Dig Here” sign, and exploring the character of a teenage mother.

“I’m at the point in my career where…finding new things to write about is always quite challenging,” Jewell said.

Jewell said very little of her writing is autobiographical. She did admit, however, to feeling a connection with Tallulah, who finds herself in an increasingly controlling relationship with Zach and few places to turn for escape. “I, myself, was in a very young marriage in my early 20s in which I was coercively controlled by my husband.”

She empathizes with Tallulah’s hesitancy to share her concerns with even her mother, to whom she is extremely close. “You don’t want anyone to know, and the reason why you don’t want anyone to know is because if you tell anyone that cares about you and loves you, they’re going to try and get involved,” she said. “They’re going to try to fix things, and that makes everything worse.”

A peek into the creative process

Interestingly, Jewell herself usually does not know how her stories will end. She simply starts writing and follows clues as the words reveal them to her. “I come to the page with nothing. I’ve done no research. I’ve barely actually thought about what it is I’m about to start doing. I’m not a planner,” Jewell said. “I’d say 90% of what the reader reads on the page happens while I’m sitting with my fingers on the keyboard. Ten percent happens when I’m walking the dog or in the shower thinking.”

This can leave much of the resolution of her stories until the last minute, which Jewell admits can be quite chaotic. So far, though, this approach has worked for her — and with seven of her books currently optioned to be adapted for the screen, it certainly is working for audiences.

Attendees — all of whom received a free Cheryl’s Cookies sampler for registering for the event — were curious to learn more about Jewell’s creative process during the question-and-answer portion of the discussion. They asked whether Jewell would want to solve a mystery in real life (definitely yes), what her writing routine is (she’s an atypical afternoon writer, who, during the pandemic, had to get an office away from home to better focus), and whether she has any strategies for writer’s block.

For this last question, Jewell had some advice that could easily apply to any daunting task: Just do it. “I manage this by not caring about whether what I write is good. I’m much more fixated on getting to 1,000 words [a day]; that becomes my obsession.

“So, I always say, ‘Just write anything. Don’t overthink it.'”

The third installment of the “Celebrations Book Club by Cheryl’s Cookies” featured New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich. During the event, Evanovich discussed her writing career, her creative process, and her latest book, The Recovery Agent.

Once upon a time, before she began churning out New York Times bestsellers over the course of a career that has spanned more than four decades, Janet Evanovich was a college student majoring in fine arts. After graduating from Douglass College, she became a painter, got married, had two kids, and became a stay-at-home mom.

And that’s when her dreams changed.

“I realized that what I liked about painting was that I was always telling myself stories about the things I was painting,” Evanovich said during a “Celebrations Book Club by Cheryl’s Cookies” virtual event. “My husband was a grad student, and we were sort of struggling, and I thought, ‘I’ll write a book, they’ll make it into a movie, and I’ll be rich and famous.'”

And write she did.

Launching into romance writing

Amazingly enough, Evanovich wouldn’t be published for a decade. “I kept trying to learn the craft, sending things out, learning who I should get as an agent, and finding ways I could get better,” she said.

She started out writing romance novels, but after nearly five years, she had an epiphany.

“I realized I was in the wrong place,” she said. “I wanted my books to have more action — less romance. I liked the sex part, but I didn’t like the prolonged relationship romance.”

A year later, she launched the Stephanie Plum series, and 28 books later — with a 29th coming in November — it’s still going strong.

Talking about process

When Claudia Copquin, host of the Celebrations Book Club and founder and producer of the Long Island Litfest, asked her about her writing process, Evanovich acknowledged that her approach has evolved.

“I used to spend a lot more time on several edits of a book,” she said. “Now, when I start a new book — if it’s a Plum — I already know a lot of things about it.”

But some things have never changed: She always takes notes in a steno pad, she always establishes how each book will begin and end before she sits down to write it, and she always lays her novels out in three acts, like a screenplay.

“I know what I’m going to try to accomplish with the relationships within the book, how much growth the characters will experience. I know the crime and several plot points that will drive the book,” she said. “It’s more of a storyboard, and I write more like a screenwriter in that way.”

Then, at night, she takes her steno pad to bed with her.

“I take notes on what I did that day and where I want to go tomorrow or maybe two days ahead,” she said. “Somehow, when I do that before I go to sleep, the ideas go around in my head while I’m sleeping and I’ll wake up with a whole lot of ideas about where I want to go.”

A rigorous daily schedule

Evanovich jokingly told Copquin that she has “no life” and spends eight to nine hours a day writing.

“I’m the world’s most boring person, but I love what I do,” she said with a laugh, adding that she loves mornings the most. “I’ll wake up early, at 5 or 5:30 a.m. and get coffee, let my little dog out to pee, and then I go back up to my office and get into this new world of characters,” she said.

After a lunch break, it’s back to her desk.

“That’s when I have no more ideas,” she said, again with a laugh. “But I need to make more pages and keep on schedule. Sometimes I only write for a couple of hours, and if I need to do shopping therapy, I will. I take time out to take a walk with my dog, but I like the continuity — I like to write every day.”

Her latest works

Game On, which hit bookstores in November 2021, revolves around Stephanie Plum chasing a cyber criminal.

“One of the things I love about this book is that I brought Diesel into it, and he’s one of my favorite characters,” she said. “In this book, he’s in there the whole time — he’s Stephanie’s partner — and they’re after the same bad guy, though she’s not sure if he’s working with her or against her.”

Evanovich said there’s a lot at stake in this book and a lot of fun is had between Stephanie and Diesel. “There’s also a nice twist at the end,” she added.

When Copquin asked how much she researched the hacking world, Evanovich said she focused her research on the many recent news reports about cybercrime.

“Usually with the Plum books I don’t do a lot of research anymore,” she said. “In the beginning, I hung out with cops in Trenton, I walked around with pepper spray, I learned how to shoot a gun, and I knew Trenton because I’m a Jersey girl.”

In her next book, The Recovery Agent (publishing this March 22), Evanovich has dreamed up a new heroine, a daredevil named Gabriela Rose.

“She’s in many ways the opposite of Stephanie,” Evanovich said. “She’s a gourmet cook, a fashionista, and she’s very good at what she does. It’s really an Indiana Jones kind of adventure story and a quest to find treasure. I can’t wait for everyone to read it!”

In the end, Evanovich shared the goal she thinks about with every book she writes: “There’s a lid for every pot,” she said. “There are cathartic reads and serious books, but that’s not my job. I’m a happy author. I write books that make me happy. I want to make my readers happy, and I want them to know if they’re having a bad day, it’s not as bad as Stephanie’s and we can all march on.

“I don’t have visions of changing the world, but I feel that my calling is to write books that give people a little break from whatever might be a misery in their day.”

Effie MacLellan grew up in Nova Scotia eating something called oatcakes, which are biscuit- or cracker-like oatmeal flatbreads that have been a part of the Scottish diet since the 14th century. Effie’s family recipe for oatcakes was already generations old when she moved to the suburbs of Boston after she got married, and she put them out for friends, family, and guests when they visited.

Her daughter, Joan MacIsaac, remembers how everyone loved her mother’s oatcakes. Whenever Effie was baking, the aroma — and, soon after, the word — spread throughout the neighborhood. Children came running to Effie’s kitchen, lured by the irresistible smell of her oatcakes. As Joan grew up, the oatcakes influenced her decision to make food a career.

After receiving her culinary certification, Joan moved to Seattle and became a chef at several high-profile restaurants. Eventually, she returned to Boston and started her own catering company. It was there that Joan met up with an old acquaintance, Irene Costello, who eventually became her business partner.

“Joan and I had known each other from high school,” Costello says. “We were in different grades; however, a mutual friend introduced us, and I ended up helping her when she catered events, in my spare time, and that’s how it all began.”

Leaving the corporate world

But Costello had a decision to make before she joined Joan’s business full-time. “I worked in the corporate world doing finance for many years, and it’s true what they say: I saw the glass ceiling. I was coming up on a milestone birthday, and I didn’t want to be in the same place I was for the next milestone birthday. I wanted something different.”

Costello ended up taking a leave of absence from her job to become more involved in Joan’s business. She took a culinary class at Boston University and received her Culinary Arts certification — and never looked back.

The two women realized that there was something about Effie’s oatcakes. “We started thinking about launching a line of cookies or crackers or biscuits, with the oatcake as the base. We just knew that they resonated because when people would take a bite of the oatcake, the expression on their faces was like, ‘Oh wow!’ They just made people happy,” Costello explains. “We kicked around other ideas, but they just didn’t pan out.”

A star is born

Determined, the two women decided in 2007 to develop a business plan. “This was around the time when the financial crisis started, and banks were going under, so it was not the most conducive time to start a business. Nevertheless, we launched in 2008, named the company after Joan’s mom — Effie’s Homemade — and we’re coming up on our 15^th year in business this month,” Costello says.

The oatcakes are still at the heart of Effie’s Homemade, but the company has since expanded its selection. It now offers seven types of biscuits, ranging from almond and cocoa to rye and walnut.

One of their proudest moments, Irene says, was winning a sofi award, “the Oscars of the food industry,” as Costello calls them. “We won the gold award in the cracker category as part of the Specialty Food Association’s 2021 honors, and that’s a big deal in the $100 billion-plus specialty food industry.”

Be prepared for a bumpy ride

For Costello, getting a company off the ground and making it successful was the hardest thing she’s ever done despite her strong business background. “This was the first company I helped start, and it was super challenging. Lots of risks and unknowns, particularly in the consumer-packaged goods industry. It’s not for the faint of heart, and we’ll admit to shedding some tears a few times along the way, particularly during the first few years when we weren’t making any money.”

In the end, though, the hard work paid off, even if things didn’t get any easier. Every day still signals a new adventure “To be sure, we had lots of help along the way from people who were always available to provide advice,” Costello admits.

“The specialty food industry is terrific. We’ve made so many friends and connections, and everyone is so willing to help in this space. I can’t emphasize it enough,” she says. Her advice to other women starting their own businesses? “Ask for help, and you’ll find out that most people are willing to give you 15 to 20 minutes of their time and share their knowledge, which is a great gift because there is just so much to know and learn.

“As your business grows and becomes bigger, you will be faced with more challenges. Your budgets get bigger, your distribution channels expand, and you hire more people. What started out as something small begins to grow, and while that is great, it can be a race to keep up.”

For that reason, women-owned businesses should look to take advantage of all the opportunities that are out there for them, Costello says. “You have so many more resources than you did 20 years ago. There are women entrepreneur business networks, certification programs, and start-up, women-only incubators and labs. It’s important that you utilize all the help you can get and know that you can’t do it alone.”

In addition to having her cookies featured in Harry & David gift baskets, Irene also takes great pride in Effie’s being on grocery store shelves. “It’s so great to see it at Kroger or Whole Foods, and to have friends say, ‘Oh, I saw Effie’s in my grocery store. It really makes you appreciate the journey.”

Photos by Kathryn Costello

Kristin van Ogtrop had an enviable career. As the editor-in-chief of women’s interest magazine Real Simple for 13 years, she loved going into the office every day. But when the publishing industry took a downturn and Kristin’s love for creating content and brand innovations was blocked by budget cuts, her frustration grew. “I felt like I was dying on the vine,” she says. “I decided to take a leap into the unknown and leave my beloved job, hoping that my skills could translate into another successful career.”

But changing careers can be a challenging task. When contemplating a career change, Kristin says it’s helpful to acknowledge what’s driving you and support that with some kind of strategy. You also have to ask yourself tough questions: Are you comfortable with risk? Do you have safeguards in place? During this time of uncertainty, Kristin did some career soul searching. “I had the privilege of a supportive spouse and savings to allow me to figure out my new destiny,” she says.

Navigating challenges in a new career

After leaving her job, Kristin tried nonprofit work and writing a novel — things that she always contemplated doing — but nothing was hitting the mark. “It was like Goldilocks trying beds and realizing that nothing fits,” she says. “It took a lot of trial and error to figure out what I wanted: to work in an office again with a group of creative people on something artistic that I feel passionate about.”

Once Kristin had that a-ha moment, she recalled a conversation she had with her literary agent, Richard Pine of Inkwell Management. Kristin had written the book Just Let Me Lie Down while she was at Real Simple, and after she left her magazine role, Richard said to her, “You either need to write another book or come work here as an agent.” Nearly two years later, after many work experiments, Kristin finally knew what she was meant to do. At the age of 54, she embarked on a brand new career as a literary agent at Inkwell Management.

It wasn’t all roses. When Kristin started the new job, she already had a successful career under her belt. “Now I was back on the bottom and I had to ask a lot of stupid questions,” she says. “People say there are no such thing as stupid questions, but they do reveal that I’m still learning the industry. The 28-year-old me would be much more concerned with looking like an idiot, but I know that I just don’t have all the answers yet.” Her self-assurance allowed her to embrace her journey to become a great literary agent. What also gave her confidence was finding the core commonalities with her previous skillset. “Working as a literary agent and magazine editor are both about looking for good written content that people will pay money for,” she says.

One of the hardest transitions for Kristin is being her own team. In her previous role, she worked with a full magazine staff that relied on each other for inspiration. Now, she depends completely on herself, and it isn’t always easy. Fortunately, she found that a long walk or cup of tea usually gets her creativity flowing.

In hindsight, Kristin is grateful she made this career pivot. “When you start in a new industry after achieving success, you get knocked down a few pegs, which is a really good lesson in humility for anyone,” she says. She also wrote a second book, Did I Say That Out Loud? Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them. An appropriate title, as Kristin knows a thing or two about that — she didn’t just survive her midlife career change, she’s thriving in it.

Tiffany Dufu is quick to share credit for her success. “I’m the cumulative investment of a lot of people who have poured themselves into me through their mentorship, sponsorship, and opening doors,” says Tiffany, the founder and CEO of The Cru, a peer mentorship community and platform, and the author of Drop the Ball: How to Achieve More by Doing Less. Tiffany moved through her early career under an apprentice model, building quality relationships along the way. “I was told, ‘Go find this woman and tell her I sent you,’” she says. “I was passed from woman to woman who gave me incredible opportunities.”

One of those influential women she was sent to find was Marie Wilson, founder of the Ms Foundation. She brought Tiffany on board to run the White House Project, an organization that worked to increase female representation in government. “You have to surround yourself with people who fundamentally believe in you, love you, and speak their truth to you,” Tiffany says. “That’s why my own peer mentors are vital to me to guide me and to push me. It’s so important to have people that support you. If I have haters, I don’t want to work with them every day.”

Tiffany’s strong support system is partly what led her to launch The Cru. But she also realized that she wasn’t alone: Countless women she spoke with were looking for the same kind of support and accountability partners. “We all have people in our lives — like our friends and family — who have a vested interest in our decision-making, but an objective group of people can push you to be accountable to what you want to achieve in life,” Tiffany says. Her mission is to foster these connections and relationships to help women advance in their careers and lives.

Accountability is a key value for her team at The Cru, too. As a leader and a founder, Tiffany has realized that being clear on your own vision is not enough — your team needs to understand that vision to lay out a road map or journey that people are excited to follow. Tiffany admits she has clarity about the end goals and what needs to happen immediately, but she says that the middle, the road-mapping phase with resourcing and prioritizing, is where it gets messy. “That’s where you need a great team because leaders who are rudderless are going to have a much harder time,” she says. “It’s magical when I can see on their faces that they know what needs to get done.”

Why showing workplace appreciation matters

Nurturing and developing her team is one of Tiffany’s favorite things, and she prioritizes empathy above all. “It’s important to acknowledge when things are tough and to be flexible when someone needs it,” she explains. To show her appreciation for her team, Tiffany’s go-to is a beautiful flower arrangement. “I love receiving flowers myself, and I think they’re an amazing way to express your gratitude to the people around you,” she says. Especially when it’s unexpected. When Tiffany was stuck with a social media challenge, someone in her network stepped up to lend a hand. She showed her appreciation with a beautiful bouquet.

Tiffany has a wealth of these leadership hacks — like encouraging the team to take deep breaths and use lavender oil for peace at the start of a meeting. By showing appreciation for others and scheduling moments of shared reflection, Tiffany has strengthened the bonds between her team. She also writes down positive feedback she’s received on a notecard to revisit for a boost when she’s feeling frustrated.

Coming full circle, Tiffany attributes her favorite leadership lessons to her mentor and sage Marie Wilson. First, she says, Marie told her always to introduce a woman in a way that she would want to know herself. “When someone gives you an amazing introduction, you want to live up to it, Tiffany explains. “It helps you realize your full potential.” That’s the power of your network. Marie’s other defining saying: It can get lonely at the top if you don’t send the elevator back down. That’s been imprinted on Tiffany, and she uses it to fuel her drive to raise up other women and bring them along for the ride.