More About Us

After a year of blogging, our group has settled down into a comfortable, dynamic flow with its own quirky rhythm. But we’re also moving forward, looking for ways to improve and expand what we’re doing.  So the time seems right to share a little more personal information about what books we read, what activities we enjoy doing, and what writing projects we’re working on.  We’ll be adding a summarized version of the following to the “Our Books” page on our website.

There are now five of us in our core group.  Our similarities have helped us bond together, while our differences have promoted a nice diversity in the books we review and the topics we blog about.  We are all writers, readers, and boomers.  But we live in different areas, write and read different types of books, and enjoy different activities and interests.  By sharing this information about ourselves, we hope it makes it easier for you to connect with us, both as a group and as individuals, and encourages you to join us in our journey as we continue toward our goal of an even better future.

About Dee Ernst
Author of Better Off Without Him
Location:  U.S. —  Mid-Atlantic Region

Dee reads pretty much everything except genre romance, which is odd considering that the main character in her book is a genre romance writer.  She particularly enjoys well-written popular fiction, fantasies, and mysteries.  Although she has started reading more nonfiction, Dee doesn’t read much self-help.  It’s not because there’s no room for improvement, but rather that she finds too much self-examination depressing.

The geographic area she lives in is a great place for one of her favorite activities—gardening.  Her yard is stone-wall-to-stone-wall perennials.  Dee also has a small rose garden her husband put together for her 4oth birthday.  She loves to cook, too, especially for large groups of friends and family.  Any excuse for a party!

Dee is working on two different writing projects with protagonists that are decades apart in age.  One is a “second act” romantic comedy about a widow in her 50’s who’s starting a new phase in her life.  The other is a young adult novel with a supernatural twist about two sisters in high school.

About Sandra Nachlinger
Co-author (with Sandra Allen) of I.O.U. Sex
Location:  U.S. — Pacific Northwest

Sandy generally reads women’s fiction such as Jodi Picoult, Anne Tyler, Maeve Binchy, and Anita Shreve.  She also enjoys popular fiction authors like Ken Follett, Larry McMurtry, and Barbara Kingsolver.  Besides well-known authors like these, Sandy loves to discover new Indie authors.  She rarely reads nonfiction.

Like Dee, Sandy enjoys gardening but admits that her real addiction is quilting.  Although she has embraced her new home in the Pacific Northwest, Sandy maintains her connection to her Southwestern roots through her accent and her lifelong friendship with her co-author, Sandra Allen.  One of her favorite ways to spend time is grandmothering. 

She is currently untangling, enhancing, and just generally tweaking one of her NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) romances with the goal of completing the work by this summer.

About Lynn Schneider
Author of Second Stories and Whatever Happened to Lily?
Location:  U.S. — Great Lakes Region

Lynn reads women’s fiction and mainstream fiction.  She never reads sci-fi or fantasy.  No vampires, ever.  She’s interested in getting into biography, especially Roosevelt, Jefferson, and Ben Franklin.  Occasionally, you can catch her reading romances, but of course that’s only for educational purposes.

She would like to claim she gardens, but she’s really bad at it.  Although Lynn may have written gardening off, one of her future goals is becoming a better cook.  She also loves knitting.  Other important interests in her life include photography and issues that affect people of our generation.

Lynn is putting the finishing touches on her third women’s fiction novel, Perigee Moon, which follows the life of a man who gets caught up in the corporate world, only to find he really desires a different kind of life.  She hopes to have it ready for publishing by late Spring.

About Lee Sinclair
Author of Book of Blognots, Not Blogs
Location:  U.S. — Pacific Northwest

Lee has gradually switched to reading mostly nonfiction, especially ones related to personal growth.  When she reads fiction, she likes humorous books or ones with an intriguing story idea.  She also enjoys historical fiction and prefers those set in the 1800’s. 

Besides reading about history, Lee likes historical museums and old buildings.  She loves taking pictures, though she’s not particularly knowledgeable about it.  Listening to music has always been an important part of her life, and she enjoys a variety—from rock ‘n’ roll to classical, from folk songs to instrumentals.

She’s making frustratingly slow progress on the sequel to her first book, which will take her eccentric, reborn spinster character into the complicated world of relationships.  Lee is also sporadically working on a humorous Regency romance and several related short stories.

About Sharon Tillotson
Author of The Storyteller
Location:  Canada — Pacific Coast

Sharon reads broadly, including romantic comedy, light fantasy, as well as classics and nonfiction.  She savors books and their words, and when she has time, tends to dig into “literary” books.  Since receiving a Kindle as a gift last year, she has been enjoying mostly Indie books.

Golf is one of Sharon’s passions, and she does it whenever she can.  Roaming near and far is another—walking, hiking, road trips, by air—in parks and gardens, at outdoor markets, on beaches, wherever her inclination might take her, whether in her hometown or in other countries.  She also loves playing board and parlor games with friends.

Sharon has two completely different projects she plans on working on this year.  The first is a novel with a protagonist from her book, The Storyteller, and the second is a series of illustrated children’s books.

I figured it was time to introduce myself

by Dee Ernst

I grew up in a house of books.

There was a ledge that ran the length of our hallway, about four feet tall and maybe two feet wide, and it was there that my parents lined up their books. There were conventional bookcases all around the house as well, but when you turned into the hallway, there they were, like soldiers in a row. Books, just sitting there, waiting to be read.

I was one of those precocious children who learned to read very early and always had to have something printed in front of me. At the breakfast table I could, and would, read every inch of the cereal box. I had blown through all of Nancy Drew by about the second grade, and often cast a jealous eye on my parents’ books.

We did not have a lot of money when I was first growing up. Most books came from garage sales and used-book sales. Luckily, my favorite aunt and uncle, also my godparents, had no children and were lavish with their gifts of books. One year I got a series of animal books – Black Beauty, Lassie-Come-Home, Rascal – six in all, hardbound, with red binding. I still have them. Another year I got a ten-volume set of ‘Great Literature for Children’. It included a book of just poetry, stories about holidays, abridged classics. I re-read them over and over. I still have them, too.

I also still have the bookcase that my father bought for me, so I could have a place in my room for all my own books. It was terribly important to me at the time. We went together and picked it out. He sanded it down and painted it antique white, then outlined the delicate curves cut out around the top with gold so it would match my French Provincial bedroom set.

When I got old enough to read what my parents were reading, all sorts of worlds opened up. My father liked art, opera, photography, old cars and guns. My mom liked more popular fiction, and loved her mysteries – Rex Stout, Erle Stanley Gardener, Agatha Christie. By the time I was in the fourth grade, I knew the difference between Nero Wolfe and Hercule Poirot and could tell an Austin Healey Sprite from an M.G. No small feat for a ten-year-old.

I also started writing when I was about ten. We had a Royal typewriter, and I’d plunk away with two fingers. My earliest influences were Walter Farley and Albert Peyson Terhune, so I wrote stories involving an adventurous young girl who did not live in a boring, middle-class suburb and did not have a bratty younger brother, but did have an ever-changing entourage of four-legged companions.

I wanted to be a writer up until I was finally getting out of college and could possibly do something about it. By then I had discovered sex, drugs and rock-and-roll, and as the real world crept in, whatever dream was left of writing The Great American Novel faded away.

Fast-forward twenty years. I was a stay-at-home mom with my second daughter, then three, and I was listening to Joan Hamburg on WOR talk radio in New York. Her guest (and I wish I could remember her name so that I could thank her) was saying that when women wanted to re-invent themselves, the easiest way to do it was to remember what you were doing when you were 10 years old. Try to make a career out of whatever you were playing, she said, because it was probably something you loved.

So I sat down and started to write. My first book taught me how to get around – in Word, in different manuscript formats, and on LiteraryAgent.com. My second book got me a terrific agent who never gave up. My third book, Better Off Without Him, gave me a hard lesson on the world of publishing in a depressed economy, and how to self-publish in 67 not-so-easy lessons.

So now I’m a writer. I’m a part-time bookseller at Barnes&Noble. I’m a full-time mom, wife, cook, gardener, walker-of-dogs…the list is endless, as many of you know. But I’m also a writer. I’m working on another book – another two books, actually. So I guess that really makes me a writer. It took me a while to think of myself that way. One of the reasons it took me so long to post an introduction here was because I had no idea what I could possibly say. Who am I, after all, to warrant a spot alongside these fine women who have been working so long and so well at their chosen craft?

As it turns out, I’m a writer. At last.

A Silver Tsunami

By All of Us Here at Boomers and Books

A recent study from the University of North Carolina concerns one of the biggest demographic shifts happening in the U.S. right now.  Based on the 2010 Census, the first Baby Boomer born in America turned 65 on January 1.  And that’s just the beginning.  Over the next five years, about 8,000 Americans — the Baby Boomer generation — will turn 65 every day, a group that will add up to 79 million people.  Call it a Silver Tsunami.  Or call it GenBB.  Namely Us.

We grew up on TV; TV grew up with us.  We went from Father Knows Best to All In the Family.  From The Ed Sullivan Show to Laugh-In.  From The Mickey Mouse Club to  M*A*S*H.  The movies gave us new heroes and heroines:  Bonnie and Clyde.  McCabe & Mrs. Miller.  Shaft and Super Fly.  Bullitt and Bond.  James Bond.

Music changed dramatically as sound moved from big bands to rock bands.  There they were:  The Beatles, Elvis, and the Rolling Stones.  The Dead, The Doors, and Dylan.  Simon & Garfunkel.  Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, and Jimi Hendrix.  The Beach Boys.  Motown and Woodstock.

Books and magazines both shaped us and reflected who we were.  MS and MAD, Playboy and Rolling Stone.  Sex and the Single Girl, Candy, and Catch-22.  The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.  A Movable Feast and Travels With Charley.

We remember:  Hula Hoops and elephant jokes, minis and maxis, Joe Namath and Rudolph Nureyev, Barbie and Twiggy.  The French Chef.  Feminists and fallout shelters, Chappaquiddick and the Chicago Seven, Sputnik and sit-ins.  Patty Hearst and Malcolm X.  The Astronauts, the Twist, and The Whole Earth Catalog.  Jack and Jackie.  Lucy and Desi.  John and Yoko.

In fact, all of us probably have a personal story to share about these people, events, and things.  Remember where you were when JFK was shot?  What your favorite book was, the one that had the most impact on your life?  Or what your reaction was when the Beatles broke up?  Were you watching when man landed on the moon?

But we live in the present.  We blog and tweet, know our iPhones from our iPads, our DVRs from our Kindles.  And no matter how we read them, in what format or type size, we are a generation of story readers and story tellers.  That’s what we want to showcase in this blog. Your stories and our stories.  We’ll cover the old and the new with love, with respect — and even a soupçon of snark when called for.  We invite you to join us.