It takes an ivillage to raise a book

David A. Maurer / Charlottesville Daily Progress
Published: February 4, 2008

The Albemarle County woman knew all too well what a returned book manuscript looked like. It's not a pleasant sight.

"The big dread when you're a writer and submitting things to publishers is to get this big, fat package back in the mail, which means they've rejected your manuscript," said Gardiner, whose monthly column appears in The Daily Progress. "You know this because if they like it they keep it, and you get a telephone call.

"So when I got my package in the mail with my rejected manuscript, I thought, 'Once again.' Then inside was a letter saying, 'No, we don't want this manuscript, but we do want this one.' "

Gardiner had sent, not one, but four writing samples to Dorchester Publishing.

"That's how I found out I was one of 10 finalists in this contest," she said. "At that point, I suddenly went from having a one- in-a-gazillion chance of getting my book

published to a one in 10 chance, because the winner gets their book published."

The writing contest was sponsored by Dorchester and Romantic Times magazine. Gardiner had learned about it through an online writer's group, which only provided a mailing address.

Not knowing the rules, Gardiner submitted four partial manuscripts. The publishers liked one, and it was entered in the five-month-long contest.

When the final online reader-submitted votes were tallied, Gardiner's novel, "Sleeping with Ward Cleaver," had been named the 2006 American Title II winner. For those not old enough to recognize the name, Ward Cleave was the staid father on the popular television sitcom "Leave It to Beaver," which aired from 1957 to 1963.

Gardiner's often hilarious book about a middle-aged woman trying to rejuvenate her stale marriage is arriving in bookstores throughout the country. Nationally known best-selling author Meg Cabot called the book, "a fun, sassy read," and compared Gardiner to a cross between Erma Bombeck and Candace Bushnell, the author of "Sex and the City."

Jane Porter, author of "Flirting with Forty," described the book as "honest, real, and wickedly funny." Suzanne Macpherson, author of "Hysterical Blondeness," found it "quirky, hilarious, thought-provoking."

Not bad reviews for a book that started with a title.

"I came up with the title and thought, 'That's catchy,' " Gardiner said with a laugh. "Then I had to write a book around the title.

"Isn't that crazy-

"But another reason why the book came about was that I had been thinking how interesting it is that women tend to reinvent themselves as they approach middle age. Often that is because they had been raising kids, they have left their jobs behind and, then all of a sudden, their kids are self-sufficient.

"A lot of women go through this total fog of motherhood for so long and then, all of a sudden, it's 'OK, now what are we doing here-' So oftentimes women start reassessing things."

Although Gardiner is a mother of three teenagers and soon will be celebrating her 21st wedding anniversary with her husband, Scott, she said the book is far from being autobiographical. She said that aside from the parrot in the book, there's nobody in it that even remotely resembles anyone she knows.

Nonetheless, the book addresses themes she is familiar with.

"I think a lot of men get very entrenched at the same time many women are kind of blossoming again," Gardiner said. "They're often in the middle of their careers and are a little bit on autopilot with their families, because they're in the thick of it with their work and they know basically somebody is taking care of things at home.

"So you have these two people who really start taking each other for granted. The wife is like, 'This guy is like my dad. He's like Ward Cleaver.'

"Hence the title. I liked the idea of exploring that theme, because it's interesting how that can happen with men and women."

With six unpublished books languishing in writer's limbo, Gardiner knew well the difficulty of getting even a good book published. Having been published in forums such as the Ladies Home Journal and the Washington Post, she knew she had talent, but signing a book deal was elusive.

The author entered the contest because she saw it as a way to, at least, get an editor to look at her manuscript.

"One of the things that happens when you're trying to sell a book is that you get desperate," Gardiner said. "Generally, you're supposed to go through an agent to get to an editor, although a lot of people say nowadays it's easier to get an editor than an agent.

"So you may send a manuscript to both and hope for the best. But if you send it to an editor without using an agent, it ends up in a room piled high with manuscripts, and they may not get to it for a year or two, if ever.

"I belong to a lot of online writing groups, and it was through one of them that I found out about the contest. To me, entering the contest was a way for my manuscript to be seen by an editor in the next three months."

Gardiner said the problem with "Sleeping with Ward Cleaver" was that it didn't readily fit into a niche. Although it's being marketed as a romance novel, the author said she'd call it mainstream women's fiction.

"When I was trying to get agents interested in this book, I think they thought it was too edgy," Gardiner said. "My main character is a bit of a smart aleck as well.

"But I think the book is very universal in its themes. For years and years when I'd get together with my women friends they'd start griping about their husbands.

"It's all common stuff. So I thought if the book would appeal to me and my friends it would appeal to others, because we're all basically the same."

Gardiner hedged her bet a bit by doing a lot of campaigning to get out the vote - for her book. Each month the publishing house would post a segment of the contestants' books online, and readers would submit an e-mail for which one they liked the best.

"Each month two people got eliminated, so basically I worked at getting the word out to as many people as I could to have them vote for me," Gardiner said. "Truthfully, I probably won because I got so many people, strangers, to help me out.

"I went to Penn State, which conveniently has [one of] the largest alumni associations in the world. I found every single chapter president and started e-mailing them asking for their support.

"Then a girl who used to baby-sit my kids and now goes to the University of Virginia said she had gotten her whole sorority to vote for me. That's when I thought, 'Girls with computers who are enthusiastic. That's what I need.' So then I started contacting sororities all over the region."

Gardiner said the folks running the contest wouldn't divulge how many votes she had gotten in order to win. She said they did tell her that they were quite astounded by how many votes she was able to wrangle.

Although Gardiner likely got considerable votes from people who just wanted to help her out, many others clearly liked the book. She used humor as a vehicle to get at some of the real issues that can lead to the unraveling of a marriage.

"The book is a fairly serious musing on the whole structure of marriage," Gardiner said. "I don't think anybody gets through a marriage without stress, anxiety and periods of times when they want to kill their spouse.

"That's just the nature of the beast. For some people it all works perfectly, but mostly not. There's a 50 percent divorce rate, and there's a reason for that.

"I think the biggest thing is that quite naturally people start taking each other for granted. One does it and the other does it and you start tit for tatting, and it just gets bigger and bigger."

The author said her hope is that the book will make people laugh and, if they identify with the protagonist, realize that they're not alone. She said being able to see the humor in a bad situation can be the first step toward fixing it.

"I know it's a cliche, but there really is a fine line between love and hate," Gardiner said. "I'd like to think if you can make that jump from love to hate, you can make the jump back again.

"That's part of what I wanted to do in the book. I wanted to take these two people who were ready to kill each other, who had completely lost sight of what it was they had liked about each other, let alone loved, and all of a sudden have to figure out if it was worth it or not.

"I think so much can be cured with a little bit of laughter. Just adding a little levity to a situation can make it so much better."

More about Gardiner and her debut novel, "Sleeping with Ward Cleaver," can be found at http://www.jennygardiner.net.

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