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Mothers and Daughters theme for my next Paris WW2 novel… how the dynamic shapes us growing up by Jina Bacarr

July 11, 2022 by in category Jina’s Book Chat, Writing tagged as , , , ,

When I was a little girl about six, I lived with my Irish grandmother when my mom was away doing amazing things… I thought she was a princess doing good deeds because I heard from my grandmum about the ‘people she helped’ and saw her wearing beautiful dresses in the pictures she brought home.

Ah, yes… my grandmum loved to spin stories about how my mom was the spitting image of her grandmother, an English lady of the realm who fell in love with an Irish rogue and ran away from home with him.

My mother was a model.

The people she ‘helped’ were the ladies in the audience.

And the dresses I saw were designs she wore for shows.

And the part about English royalty? My grandmum swore it was true, her eyes sparkling as she mixed up Irish potato pancakes (boxty, my favorites) and I believed it.

Because what little girl doesn’t want to believe her mom is a royal lady?

I still don’t know if the story is true, though my Great-Aunt Marie swore it was… and since she was a pious lady who lived her life as a lay sister among the nuns, who’s going to dispute it?

So what does this have to do with my upcoming Paris WW2 book?

It’s about the dynamics of how we see our mothers and how it shapes us growing up. My mum taught me to be a ‘lady’ and look for the good in everyone and never be selfish if we had extra cake or leftover pot roast and share it with someone who needed it. Since Mom was a great cook, she never lacked for takers.

My mom became the inspiration for the German girl’s ‘Mutti’ in my story. Kindness, understanding… and also the model for the American heiress’s mom… Philadelphia society with an Irish lineage.

Mothers and Daughters… a quilt rich with history and ideas… highs and lows… sorrows and sighs. But in the end, they’re our mothers and God bless them.

Jina —————–

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mom and me

————–

My next Paris WW2 book will be released in Fall 2022. More info coming!

Till then…

check out my Paris WW2 novels:

Paris 1940

The Lost Girl in Paris

My heroine, Angeline de Cadieux, is a Roma girl in WW2 Paris… she’s strong, fights in the Resistance… makes exquisite perfumes and comes up with an amazing marketing campaign during the war to boost morale in France.

Thank you!

UK https://amzn.to/3j7eU6S

US https://amzn.to/3aD9Jae

CA https://amzn.to/3IbaVRZ

AU https://amzn.to/3xtrF1A

 

 

The Resistance Girl

Juliana discovers her grandmamma was a famous French film star in Occupied Paris & her shocking secret…

US https://amzn.to/2FoKKeS 

UK https://amzn.to/3bU18Qv  

CA https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08DNDHDG4

AU https://amazon.com.au/dp/B08DNDHDG4

 

 

 

 

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How I learned to stop worrying and love TikTok… my 5 tips by Jina Bacarr

June 11, 2022 by in category Jina’s Book Chat, TikTok, Writing tagged as , ,

Do you TikTok?

Love it or hate it?

What to post? Dancing to retro music in your PJs?

Reading from your book while trying to looking into your cell camera?

Show your face or not?

Just when we authors felt comfortable Tweeting and Facebooking, now we’re TikToking.

Sort of.

It’s the Wild West in TikTok-land and it’s difficult to know what works and what doesn’t. For example, I posted a vampire short story about speed dating a sexy vampire with sound effects, action, romance, humor… it only got 12 views…

Sometimes I talk into camera about my books, but I haven’t mastered ‘page flipping’ the book, holding the camera, and saying anything remotely intelligent at the same time. I’m still sweating it, but I haven’t given up.

When I post beautiful cakes that I find in my local markets, I get hits. Over 700 on this one:

I even did an April Fools’ joke — a video about my ‘next’ book ‘LuLu goes to Paris’ about a little turtle’s journey…

Here’s my latest TikTok video where I show off my ‘cake skills’ — sort of, the vanilla buttercream icing melted — and talked abut my two Paris WW2 books. So far I have. ZERO views. (it can take HOURS for the TikTok algorithm to put your video in the queue… whom to show it to… where (country)… and a million other reasons. I don’t use the music you can add… I prefer to talk about what my books. If anyone has any comments about using the music tracks, I’m all ears (no pun intended but I couldn’t help it — it’s 3 am as I write this). UPDATE: 19 hours later, I have 335 views.

@jinabacarrauthor

tempting goodies while I wait for edits on my next Paris WW2 novel #booktok @boldwoodbooks #writingcommunity #book #historicalfiction

♬ original sound – Jina Bacarr

In the end, be yourself. If you love hamming it up in bunny slippers and Disney Princess PJs, go for it. Everybody knows we authors are ‘different’, so show the audience that part of you.

—————————–

5 tips:

post often

post short clips

be real and be quirky if that fits you

talk about your books… short and I mean short excerpts, lines, etc. Provocative, intrigue the viewer to want to know more…

use ‘author’ in your name so viewers know you write books. Mine is: https://www.tiktok.com/@jinabacarrauthor

I discovered these 5 tips by joining https://www.facebook.com/groups/tiktokforauthors — a fabulous group of TikTokAuthors on Facebook.

I’ve also just applied to join author Fiona Lucas’s new FB TikTok group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/tiktok4authors

That’s it for the moment… If you have any tips or TikTok stories you want to share, please do in the comments.

Most of all, have fun!!

Jina

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Mothers and daughters… theme of my next Paris WW2 book and why I wrote it by Jina Bacarr

May 11, 2022 by in category Jina’s Book Chat, women's fiction, Writing tagged as , , , ,

On this Mother’s Day past, I was looking for a pretty graphic of flowers or chocolate or a cute puppy

to post but how to personalize it?

Hmm…

I ate all the chocolate during my marathon writing week finishing my manuscript.

I could buy red roses… or pink… I like yellow…. I couldn’t make up my mind.

And if I went puppy shopping, I’d come home with as many cute puppies as my arms could hold.

Back to square one… how to personalize Mother’s Day?

Especially since my next Boldwood Books novel is about Paris WW 2 is about mothers and daughters. How two daughters (Irish-American and German Jewish) — my heroines — and their relationships with their moms are affected by war.

A topic dear to my heart since I lost my mother many years ago. I had such a wonderful relationship with her. We were so close and, growing up, I adored her. When we lived in Kentucky, she was a model on live TV commercials and I used to race home from grade school to watch her on TV modeling fashion from a local dress shop.

I’ll never forget the day I was watching TV with my sitter and we were waiting to see my mom when we had a major thunderstorm. Powerful winds and a drenching downpour. I was around eleven when lightning struck the tall TV tower and it fell on the TV station… the television went black… pouring rain outside. Telephone lines down. Where was Mom? I panicked when she didn’t come home. My dad came rushing home from work to check on us… what, Mom isn’t here?

He grabbed me and we jammed to the TV station in our old blue Dodge, braving the pouring rain and deep puddles. When we got there, we saw….

Firetrucks… police cars… reporters.

Then someone said a woman had been killed when she was struck by falling debris.

I was a kid, but I never felt such panic cut through me, such anguish that something could happen to my beautiful mom. She was always there for me… we baked cookies together, sewed dresses together… I couldn’t grasp the idea of losing her. It pained me more than anything in my young life.

I turned to see my dad’s face so pale, his jaw clenched… he told me to wait with the police officer while he checked to see–

He left the words hanging…

It was the longest time in my life, waiting….

Then the news.

No, it wasn’t Mom. She came racing back with my father in tow, holding her tight around the waist. I ran into her arms and she hugged me tight… I could feel her trembling. She was wearing a red satin shirtwaist dress she was modeling that day and she was in the makeup room waiting for her cue when the tower fell. She was shaken up, but okay.

A woman who worked there lost her life that day and we cried and said prayers for her and her family. I never forgot it.

The pain and anguish of seeing how quickly you can lose someone so dear to you stayed with me. When I thought about what I wanted to write about for this next book. I decided to explore mothers and daughters during wartime… I begin my story back in 1934 when we meet my two heroines and their mothers and see their relationships grow over the years… the joys, frustrations… growing pains… then war is declared…

I hope you’ll come with me on my journey to publication of this unique World War 2 mothers and daughters story!

And for Mother’s Day?

I decided to post this short video of Mom and me when I was ten. Enjoy!!

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The Titanic sailed today 110 years ago…with a Pig on board by Jina Bacarr

April 11, 2022 by in category Jina’s Book Chat, Reading, Titanic, Writing tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Photos: Dreamstime.com — using RF stock, my interpretation of the ship and female passenger and of course, the little pig.

Downton Abbey is but a memory… but it will be forever in our hearts.

Do you remember that first scene when a messenger on a bicycle brought a telegram to the Crawley family that would forever change their lives?

And ours?

A telegram about two male relatives lost at sea.

On the Titanic.

Hard to believe it’s 110 years ago today the grand ship Titanic left Ireland.

So in honor of the souls who perished that night and those who survived, here is a lesser known story about the Titanic.

And the pig.

According to the New York Herald on April 19, 1912: Five women saved their pet dogs and another woman saved a little pig, which she said was her mascot.

The reporter goes on to say that she didn’t know how the woman cared for her pig aboard the Titanic, but she carried it up the side of the ship [the Carpathia, rescue ship] in a big bag.

How did the pig get into the lifeboat?

Was the little pig traveling first class?

In a word, yes.

More about this intrepid little piggy and the important part it played in the sinking of the Titanic later. First, it seems you can’t get away from pigs and the Titanic.

In the Julian Fellowes’ mini-series Titanic, a passenger in third class isn’t happy about traveling steerage to New York. She tells her husband that her daughter said their Irish Catholic family is like six little pigs packed into that cabin, all trussed and bound for market.

They’re not the only Irish aboard the ship with pigs on their mind.

Ava O’Reilly, the heroine in my historical romance, THE RUNAWAY GIRL nearly doesn’t make it on board the ship because of a pig.

Katie runs away from the grand house where she is in service after she is wrongly accused of stealing a diamond bracelet. The law is after her, but she has one chance to escape.

The Titanic.

Will Ava make it on board the Titanic before she sails? Only by the skin of her teeth.

Does she see the pig during the crossing?

Few passengers did because the cute little pig with the curly tail was the lucky mascot of Miss Edith Russell.

She loved to wind up its tail and it would play a lively musical tune similar to a two-step called Maxixe.

You see, the pig was musical pig.

The reporter on the Carpathia didn’t know the real story behind Miss Russell’s pig. How it was given to her after she survived a horrific motorcar crash. She promised her mother it would never be out of her sight. When she realized the Titanic was sinking and she’d left her mascot in her cabin, she sent the steward to retrieve her lucky pig.

Still, Edith was hesitant to get into a lifeboat. When a seaman tossed her pig into a boat (believing it was a baby wrapped up in a bag), Edith insisted on getting into the boat, too. Its nose was gone and its legs broken, but Edith and her little pig escaped in lifeboat no. 11.

Overcrowded with sixty-eight passengers (nearly one-third were children), Edith realized her little pig could comfort others as it had her. She wound up its tail so it would play music for the children. Most of the little ones stopped crying as the pig’s sparkling musical notes calmed their fears.

Its furry, white-gray body wet with sea spray.

Its cute grin giving them hope they would be saved.

It was the little Titanic pig that could.

Thanks for stopping by!

~Jina

The Runaway Girl

Buy Links:

Amazon:

US https://amzn.to/30yll8P

UK https://amzn.to/2NCqTty

Audible https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084MM1D4R

Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/3A08bcsCeI6LHWRQTmAM30

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-runaway-girl-jina-bacarr/1135653540?ean=9781838893736

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-runaway-girl-1

Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-runaway-girl/id1492269132

 

PS check out TITANIC AND ME, my story behind the story on the BOLDWOOD BOOKS Blog.

Once upon the ship of dreams… me dressed as a first class lady

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The Lost Girl in Paris hit # 33 on the Kindle Charts & # 2 Fiction & Literature on Apple by Jina Bacarr

March 11, 2022 by in category Jina’s Book Chat, Writing tagged as ,
@jinabacarrauthor

The Lost Girl in Paris hit 33 on #Amazon #kindle @boldwoodbooks #booktok #booksoftiktok #authorlife #authorsoftiktok #writer #author #histfictok

♬ original sound – Jina Bacarr Historical Author♥

Celebrating The Lost Girl in Paris hitting # 33 on the US Amazon Kindle List.

And # 2 in the Fiction & Literature category on Apple.

Amazing…

BookBub Deal:

99 cents/99p

My heroine, Angeline de Cadieux, is a Roma girl in WW2 Paris… she’s strong, fights in the Resistance… makes exquisite perfumes and comes up with an amazing marketing campaign during the war to boost morale in France.

Thank you!

UK https://amzn.to/3j7eU6S

US https://amzn.to/3aD9Jae

CA https://amzn.to/3IbaVRZ

AU https://amzn.to/3xtrF1A

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