J.L. (Janet) Greger Climbs Roofs and Does Something Harder - Picks a Book Cover

J.L. Greger is no longer a biology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; instead she’s putting tidbits of science into her novels.

She and Bug, her Japanese Chin dog and the only non-fictional character in all three of her novels, live in the Southwest.  Her website is at http://www.jlgreger.com. Her blog, JL Greger’s Bugs, is at http://www.jlgregerblog.blogspot.com

Choosing a Cover for IGNORE THE PAIN

I’m no expert on picking covers, but I have opinions. I think a good cover is like a good title. It suggests the topic of the book and is catchy. I will also admit that I like bright primary colors for thrillers and adventure books, pastels for romances, and dark moody colors for horror and mystery novels because the colors convey a message.

Those of you who are sophisticated in your choice of covers have probably concluded that I’m very traditional. Now look at the cover of my new medical thriller. Ignore the Pain is set partially in Bolivia, and the heroine Sara Almquist is an epidemiologist serving as a public health consultant there.

I looked at hundreds (maybe even thousands) of pictures of scenes in South America. None seemed right. They were too pretty and gave no hint about my protagonist. Then I saw a photo with the colors of the Bolivian flag drawn across the face of a blue-eyed woman, like Sara. This woman looked like she had guts.

Now do you still think I’m traditional older woman or do I deserve the title of spunky? If you’re still not convinced, please note I did climb to the roof of Iglesia de San Francisco and peer down at the Witches Market in La Paz, Bolivia. Of course, I wasn’t being chased like Sara Almquist is in Ignore the Pain.

I surfed the WEB for blogs on the topic of choosing a cover after I wrote the first four paragraphs of this blog. Many were by authors showing readers two to five choices, and collecting votes for which cover was best. Some were ads by professional cover designers who didn’t seem to want to admit their secrets. Billie Johnson, my publisher at Oak Tree Press and a spunky senior, gave the best advice. She called the picture we selected “a real grabber.”

I hope this blog encourages you grab for attention when you select your next cover.

In Ignore the Pain, Sara Almquist couldn’t say no when invited to be the epidemiologist on a public health mission to assess children’s health in Bolivia. Soon someone from her past in New Mexico is chasing her through the Witches’ Market of La Paz and trying to trap her at the silver mines of Potosí. Unfortunately, she can’t trust her new colleagues, especially the unsavory Xave Zack, because any one of them might be under the control of the coca industry in Bolivia. 
And coca is everywhere in Bolivia.

Ignore the Pain is the third novel in a series that tracks the adventures of epidemiologist Sara Almquist and her more reserved sister – physician Linda Almquist. 

In the suspense novel Coming Flu, Sara, while tracking the spread of the deadly Philippine flu, identifies a drug kingpin trapped in a quarantined community. 
In the medical mystery Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight, Linda Almquist must discover whether an ambitious young “diet doctor” or old-timers in a medical school with buried secrets is a killer.

Website: http://www.jlgreger.com. 
JL Greger’s Bugs Blog is at http://www.jlgregerblog.blogspot.com.

Amazon sell links:

Ignore the Pain: http://www.amazon.com/Ignore-Pain-J-L-Greger/dp/1610091310/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385498311&sr=1-1&keywords=Ignore+the+Pain

Coming Flu: http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Flu-ebook/dp/B008WDL84O/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1372715303&sr=1-1&keywords=Coming+Flu

Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight: http://www.amazon.com/Murder-New-Lose-Weight-ebook/dp/B00DFCC3IM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1372715439&sr=1-1&keywords=Murder%3A+A+New+Way+to+Lose+Weight

JL Greger's Website: http://www.jlgreger.com. 

Blog: JL Greger’s Bugs, http://www.jlgregerblog.blogspot.com.

Please leave a comment to welcome JL Greger to Spunky Senior Authors and Talents.

Meet Spunky Senior Author J.L. Greger, Scientist and Once Pig Farmer

                                                                

J.L. Greger and Bug

Spunky Women Scientists 

              By J. L. Greger

In my new novel Coming Flu the heroine Sara Almquist is a retired epidemiologist from Michigan State University. She retired early to the Albuquerque area because she was tired of university politics and cold weather. On the positive side, she wanted to explore her artistic side and do pet therapy with her dog Bug.

I guess Sara is like me in some ways. We were both raised on pig farms in the Midwest. I was a professor in biological sciences at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison for twenty-five years. I retired early to get time to write fiction and to get away from snow. My Japanese Chin named Bug (shown in the picture with me) is the model for Bug in the novel. Together we do pet therapy in two hospitals in Albuquerque. Fortunately, my life is not as traumatic as Sara’s.

One of the reasons I wrote Coming Flu was I wanted to help non-scientists sense the excitement, potential, and limits of modern biology. This medical thriller is an example of a new genre of literature called science in fiction or Lab Lit. Coming Flu is not science fiction because a serious flu epidemic could happen.

A second reason for writing this medical thriller was I wanted to create a realistic image of women in science. No one expected the quiet, six-year-old in this photo to become a scientist. Her favorite activity was playing with her dolls. She was not a tomboy.

Similarly, Sara doesn’t fit the traditional image of a scientist in fiction. Think about it. The scientists in many science fiction novels and movies (Frankenstein and its clones) are aging, un-athletic, males with anti-social tendencies. Comic strips improved the image of scientists, at least visually, to be handsome males, like Batman and Iron Man. Now TV shows, like CSI, Bones, and NCIS, feature attractive, young women as scientists. But few scientists in popular books, movies, or TV shows are mature women.

To a certain extent, the changes in the images of scientists in fiction reflect reality. In 1958, women earned 8% of the doctoral degrees awarded in science and engineering in the US. In 1985 and 2006, women earned 27% and 40%, respectively, of the doctorates awarded in these fields. Don’t get too excited about progress! Look at the figures for women holding professorships in science and engineering. Women held 4.5% of those positions in 1973 and 17.9% of the in 2003.

I was an associate dean at the UW-Madison who helped departments recruit women scientists in the 1990’s. Recruiting women to assistant professorships wasn’t as hard as retaining them and grooming them to become full professors. Part of the problem was the social isolation many felt in largely male science department. Personally, I thought the worst part was faculty parties when women faculty members were relegated to talking to wives of older professors in the kitchen. I’m being unfair, many of the wives were nice.

Things have improved. I hope Coming Flu will whet the appetite of readers for spunky, mature women doing real science in more novels in the future.

About Coming Flu: A flu epidemic breaks out in a walled community near the Rio Grande. More than two hundred die in less than a week. The rest face a bleak future when quarantine is imposed. One resident, Sara Almquist, a medical epidemiologist, pries into every aspect of her neighbor’s lives looking for ways to stop the spread of the flu. She finds promising clues - maybe too many.

Coming Flu was published by Oak Tree Press and is available in paperback and eBook formats from the publisher and Amazon. See http://www.jlgreger.com for more information on J. L. (Janet) Greger, Coming Flu, and the new genre of fiction - science in fiction or Lab Lit.

J.L.'s website is: http://www.jlgreger.com

The buy link to Oak Tree Press is: http://oaktreebooks.com/Shop%20OTP.htm#ComFlu 

The buy link to Amazon is: http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Flu-J-L-Greger/dp/1610090985?

Please welcome J.L. Greger to Spunky Senior Authors and Talents by Leaving a Comment.