Janet Wertman: Members Only Author Chat on Douglas Howard

Опубликовано: 18 Октябрь 2024
на канале: History and Coffee (also Books, Pens & Music)

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We're a big fan of Tudorcon Speaker Janet Wertman on this channel, and this chat demonstrates why!

Janet Ambrosi Wertman grew up within walking distance of three bookstores and a library on Manhattan’s Upper West Side – and she visited all of them regularly. Her grandfather was an antiquarian bookdealer who taught her that there would always be a market for quirky, interesting books. He was the one who persuaded Janet’s parents to send her to the French school where she was taught to aspire to long (grammatically correct) sentences as the hallmark of a skillful writer. She lived that lesson until she got to Barnard College. Short sentences were the rule there. She complied. She reached a happy medium when she got to law school – complicated sentences alternating with simple ones in a happy mix.

Janet spent fifteen years as a corporate lawyer in New York, she even got to do a little writing on the side (she co-authored The Executive Compensation Answer Book, which was published by Panel Publishers back in 1991). But when her first and second children were born, she decided to change her lifestyle. She and her husband transformed their lives in 1997, moving to Los Angeles and switching careers. Janet became a grantwriter (and will tell anyone who will listen that the grants she’s written have resulted in more than $40 million for the amazing non-profits she is proud to represent) and took up writing fiction.

There was never any question about the topic of the fiction: Janet has harbored a passion for the Tudor Kings and Queens since her parents let her stay up late to watch the televised Masterpiece Theatre series (both The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R) when she was cough eight years old. One of the highlights of Janet’s youth was being allowed to visit the Pierpont Morgan Library on a day when it was closed to the public and examine books from Queen Elizabeth’s personal library and actual letters that the young Princess Elizabeth (technically Lady Elizabeth…) had written.

With the Seymour Saga complete, Janet is deep into writing her next trilogy, which takes up where the Seymours left off to illustrate the life of Elizabeth I. And because you can never have too much Tudors in your life, Janet also attends book club meetings (she’d love to come to yours!) and participates in panels and discussions through History Talks!, a group of historical novelists from Southern California who work with libraries around the state.