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Showing posts from February, 2022

The Hurricane Lover: Backstory of a stormy soul project

As a ghostwriter, it's important for me to carve out time for soul projects: books that I can't not write. The Hurricane Lover is one of those. Eleven years after its original publication, I'm thrilled to bring it out of the vault with this fabulous new cover by Kapo Ng.  I was storm-obsessed long before the epic hurricane season of 2005. I was born in the American Midwest, where summer storms brought green skies and the smell of tornados. For one wonderful year, my family lived in a rundown townhome on the beach in Florida. During the offseason, the Gulf of Mexico turned steely, wind whipped up blades of white sand, and skies blackened over the glorious chaos. Wrapped in a blanket on the balcony outside the room I shared with my three sisters, I hugged my knees and counted the seconds between thunder and lightning.   In 2005, my husband Gary and I were living in Houston, Texas, not far from the upscale area where Bob and Char Hoovestahl live in the book. New Orleans was an...

The Hurricane Lover is out of the vault

  As Hurricane Katrina howls toward New Orleans, Dr. Corbin Thibodeaux, a firebrand climatologist, preaches the gospel of evacuation, weighed down by the spectacularly false alarm he raised a year earlier. Meanwhile, journalist Shay Hoovestahl is tracking a con artist who uses storm-related chaos as cover for identity theft and murder. She drags Corbin into her plan, which goes horribly awry as the city’s infrastructure crumbles, a media circus spins out of control, and another megastorm begins to brew in the Gulf of Mexico.  The Hurricane Lover  is a fast-paced tale of two cities—one ruled by denial, the other by fear—and two people whose stormy love affair is complicated by polarized politics, high-strung Southern families, and the worst disaster management goat-screw in US history. Drawing on firsthand experience, Joni Rodgers writes knowingly about the dramatic megastorms, weaving in climatology studies, riveting blow-by-blow weather reports and forecasts, and actual ...

Cover me! Designer Kapo Ng captures my writing vibe

I'm on a publishing high this winter, rolling out the #SIXObooks to celebrate turning 60. Challenged with the idea of branding six books that have only one thing in common (me), I gave designer Kapo Amos Ng the baseline concept "neo-retro, if that's a thing - like 1970s Polish poster art" and he ran with it.  My favorite moments are the Sugarland butterfly (that fabulous twist of Georgia O'Keeffe!) and Smartie's old school typewriter. Across the board, Kapo nailed the quirky, ironic, vaguely perverse, and occasionally pissed off joie de vivre that defines my writing vibe. When I look at these books, I see the stories inside. In many ways, it's the story of my life. More about the books on my website.

Crazy for Trying: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly reviews

In the coming weeks, I'll be rolling out fresh editions of six bestselling backlist books. Feel like doing me a birthday solid? Read and review one or more!  This week,  Crazy for Trying , a Barnes & Noble Discover Award finalist originally published 25 years ago, is out of the vault, available in paperback and ebook. Over the years, this book has generated reviews that run the gamut from effusive flattery to punch in the face. I'm truly grateful to every reader and reviewer who took the time and energy to respond. Yes, even the ones who hated it.  😎 The Good:  (The Brontë moment still fills my heart with joy.) "Think Jane Eyre with rock and roll." -  Houston Press "Refreshing and provocative." -  Houston Chronicle "A fresh pleasure...Rodgers writers love scenes that scorch the pages." - Orlando Sentinel "Truly captivating...inevitable comparisons to McMurtry and McGuinn, but Rodgers' prose and style are unique." - Texas Books in...

How my debut novel and I gave birth to each other during chemo

I'm celebrating turning 60, rolling out fresh editions of six backlist books. Watch this space and follow me on Instagram for opportunities to score autographed copies.  Out of the vault this week:  Crazy for Trying 25th Anniversary Author's Cut , my debut novel originally published by MacMurray & Beck in 1996. This book and I gave birth to each other in the mid-1990s while I was undergoing chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a virulent blood cancer. My prognosis was poor: a 50 percent chance of survival up to five years. Anything beyond that was “statistically negligible.” I was thirty-two years old, c onfronted with the question:  How does one live a full life by some metric other than time?  I developed a five-year plan that included two realistically achievable goals:   First: Vigilant in word and deed, I would leave a handprint of lovingkindness on my five-year-old daughter, Jerusha, and my seven-year-old son, Malachi, hoping that would give substa...

Out of the vault: CRAZY FOR TRYING 25th Anniversary Author's Cut

In the coming weeks, I'll be rolling out fresh editions of six bestselling backlist books. Watch this space and follow me on Instagram for opportunities to score autographed copies.  This week, Crazy for Trying , my debut novel originally published 25 years ago by MacMurray & Beck is out of the vault, available in paperback and ebook.  Here's the logline: In 1970s Montana, a zaftig disc jockey sets out to reinvent herself, fleeing the shadow of her two (in)famous moms—a radical author/activist and an aging hippie artist—but she's soon embroiled in volitile office politics and an impossible love triangle, forced to choose between her mom’s artistic protégé and a damaged Viet Nam war vet.