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Ten Cameos: My appearances in my fiction
As an author of both
fiction and nonfiction, I often get asked if my fiction has anything from my
personal life in it. On the flipside, I’ve also been asked if something
particularly unusual or compelling in my nonfiction is really true. I think
it’s impossible not to have some part of yourself represented through your
fiction writing. For me, it’s usually my emotions that I recognize. A sentence
will come out and suddenly I realize it’s familiar, something I’ve felt
in the past woven into a character’s story. Like dreams, fiction mixes our real-life
experiences, our unconscious and our imagination. The fragments of my own emotional
life that I find in my books are unintentional. I usually only realize any
personal significance after the fact.
However, I do make cameo
appearances in all of my fiction by purposefully integrating personal influences
into my characters’ stories.
Here
are my top ten and the books where you can find them:
Catcher in the
Rye, J. D. Salinger (Before the Footprints Fade
coming in spring of 2020)
Into the Wild,
Jon Krakauer (Where You’ll Land, Love’s Remains)
Man’s Search
for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
(Circle of Betrayal)
The Gift of
Therapy, Irvin Yalom (Love’s
Remains)
Waldon, Henry David Thoreau (Where You’ll Land, Love’s
Remain, The Cat Who Ate His Tail)
“Bring me Back to Life,” Evanescence
(Circle of Betrayal)
“Crush,” Dave Matthews
Band (Love’s Remains)
“Glycerine,” Bush (Forever
and One Day, Before the Footprints Fade)
HOUSE (The Cat Who Ate His Tail)
Sex and the
City (The Cat Who Ate His
Tail)
The Cat Who Ate His Tail
Jacqueline Simon Gunn
Genre: Animal Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Psychological Fiction
Date of Publication: November 15, 2019
Jacqueline Simon Gunn
Genre: Animal Fiction, Women’s Fiction, Psychological Fiction
Date of Publication: November 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1699608081
ASIN: B07ZY6VZNH
Number of pages: 324
Word Count: 76,059
Book Description:
Have you ever wondered what your pets are thinking?
Inspired by true events, this heartwarming story is told from the perspective of Sneakers, a curious cat with serious emotional baggage. Neglected and ultimately abandoned by his original owner, he compensates for the trauma by overeating and making droll observations about the crazy love life of his new owner… who also happens to be a psychologist.
Through paying attention to her work, the loving home she provides and watching her own trials and tribulations, Sneakers learns so much more about life, love and the ways of the world. Both their lives take unexpected turns, both suffer for their own inability to see their inherent worth. But just maybe they can help each other learn the most important lesson of all before it’s too late: If you let it, love can heal even the deepest wounds.
Sometimes you must be willing to take that second chance.
Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/zGKvFLjVTIU
Excerpt:
“I love her,” he
raised his voice. His feet were right next to the couch. Please, don’t make me
kill you. I’d be the cat who ate his tail and killed a human on the Upper
Eastside. This would not look good for me. They’d judge me based on the tail
incident and assume the murder was due to my instability, never considering the
duress that preceded his demise.
That’s why he
was living with a shrink. Nut job. I heard the newscasters saying.
My eyes followed
his feet. He bent down, glaring at me underneath the couch, and yelled, “I love
her. You hear me. Just because she isn’t the girl I want to spend my life with
doesn’t mean I don’t love her.”
What kind of
catnip was he sniffing? Leave her alone then.
I stared back at
him, my heart pounding even harder.
I heard
rummaging. From his shadow, I thought he was in her desk. Probably trying to
sift through her drawers. Maybe looking for notes or things she’d written down,
so he knew what she was thinking. Then the couch bounced as he plopped down
onto the middle cushion. I wondered how this was going to go down when she came
home and found him. Which would be worse: finding him dead or alive, I
wondered. But before I had to choose, he got up, and I heard him fumbling
around in the kitchen, and then the front door closed.
I waited an
ample amount of time, inhaling to get my breathing even, then strutted into the
kitchen, sniffing around where he’d left his sour scent, the only evidence of
him being here. I knew humans’ sense of smell wasn’t as strong. I wondered if
my mom would know just by intuition that Moby had come. I thought of ways I
might communicate it to her. I was lying on my chair ruminating about this when
I heard my mom turning the doorknob, then her voice mixing with that of a
strange man’s.
I took a heavy
breath. What a stressful night. Now I had to scrutinize the new guy while
figuring out how to tell her about Moby’s appearance. I was exhausted and
crashing from the adrenalin of what had happened earlier.
“What’s wrong,
handsome?” She kneeled beside me, rubbing my head. Looking up at this new tall
man-human who had a warm smile, she explained, “He always greets me at the
door. Something feels weird in here.”
“Whadaya mean?”
“Like someone
was here.”
“Like a
break-in? “Or like a ghost?”
She looked
around. “Nothing looks out of place on first glance. Do you believe in ghosts?”
“I do, and I
think cats see them. Maybe he saw something.”
“He does look
spooked by something, doesn’t he?”
“It’s hard to
tell.” He bent down and rubbed my head. “He is a good-looking cat.” He rubbed
under my neck. “Did you see something?” he asked me.
“Maybe they see
things that aren’t there. Maybe he thought he saw something.” She wore a
perplexed looked, but it got me thinking and wondering if that ghost thing was
possible.
Maybe I was
losing my mind. Was Moby here or did I imagine the whole thing because the idea
of him haunted me?
Gosh, maybe that last catnip pillow was laced
with something.
About the Author:
Jacqueline Simon Gunn is a Manhattan-based clinical psychologist and writer. She has authored two non-fiction books, and co-authored two others. She has published many articles, both scholarly and mainstream, and currently works as a freelance writer. Gunn is now writing psychological fiction. Always in search of truth and fascinated by human behavior, her fiction writing, like psychology, is a way for her to explore human nature — motivation, emotions, relationships.
In addition to her clinical practice and writing, Gunn is an avid runner and reader. Gunn is currently working on multiple writing projects, including a spin-off of “Forever and One Day,” the third book in the Where You’ll Land series and a book written from her cat’s POV.
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