Rock Star’s Girl

L.A. novelist Jennifer Farwell (AKA J.F. Kristin)

Last week, I had a very cool editing contract. I spent my days in coffee shops, and my evenings on my balcony, editing Jennifer Farwell’s (AKA J.F. Kristin’s) latest novel: Rock Star’s Girl. 

There is nothing I like better than immersing myself in a text and trying to find ways to improve it. Editing Jennifer’s latest work was particularly fun, because the text she sent me to work with was virtually free of typographical errors. This left me free to focus on what I like doing best: eliminating commas, shortening sentences, and looking for ways to improve flow and clarity. For an editor, working with a writer who has put so much effort, energy, and heart into her work is a rare pleasure.

Who is Jennifer Farwell? Farwell currently makes her home in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, where she leads an interesting life writing novels, taking in the vibrant L.A. music scene, and working as the managing editor for the Yahoo! Store Blog.

She has been a writer virtually her whole life. In fact, at the age of 7, she participated in her first Young Author’s conference. When she was 11, she was published, for the first time, in The Chronicle Journal (Thunder Bay, Ontario). At 18, her love of music inspired her to start her own music magazine titled Sound Check.

As a teenager, she also began to experiment with Web design and created her own Web site playfully named the Society for Preventing Parents From Naming Their Children Jennifer, or the SPPNTCJ for short. During it’s four year run, the SPPNTCJ would receive over 2 million visitors and attracted attention and coverage from  Yahoo! Internet Lifemagazine, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Thunder Bay Television News, 580 CKPR radio, and California State University (Chico). Not bad for a teenager living in Thunder Bay, Ontario eh?

I met Jennifer in graduate school at Carleton University where we were both enrolled in the English literature M.A. program. Jennifer and I shared a love for Michael Ondaatje novels and an ambivalence for 18th century literature.

She particularly impressed me, then, because not only was she able to hold down a full-time gov’t job while attending graduate school full-time, but also found the energy to hang out with the Mike’s Place (grad pub) crowd of which I was a regular member.

Here’s a little known fact about Jennifer: after a margarita, she is also willing to brave a karaoke microphone to belt out a rendition of Britney Spears’ “Baby, One More Time.” Impressive!

Her novel Rock Star’s Girl will be available in late July. It tells the story of Emily Watts, the owner and sole writer of a “snark-fashion” Web site, called Zeeked, who becomes caught, overnight, in a web of media scandal and instant celebrity. To save the Web site, and the writing career she’s made her life and dream, Emily must go from being a pawn in the Hollywood headline game to becoming a media mastermind.  For a preview click here