Ask the Author: Jenni Ogden
Answered Questions (6)
Jenni Ogden
If I extend ‘my life’ back to my genealogical past, there are many intriguing mysteries. My earliest ancestors who arrived in New Zealand came on the very first immigrant ship to New Zealand, arriving in 1842. George McKinlay and Fanny Cannon (love that name!) and their six children came to NZ on The Duchess of Argyle from Glasgow (a sixteen week journey), and had more children when they arrived in Auckland (which was very primitive at that time). I have followed them back and been to the house they lived in, in Paisley, Scotland, where they were weavers, and been in the church where they married. However, according to the Census they were not born in Scotland, but in Ireland, possibly Northern Ireland, as they were protestants and there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing between Northern Ireland and Scotland as they were so close geographically, and therein lies the mystery. I can find no records of them in Ireland, whether by searching records or by going to Ireland and searching. So many records were lost in Ireland, sadly. Indeed there are many ‘mysteries’ or more accurately ‘stories to be discovered’ in my genealogy, as all of my ancestors emigrated to NZ from the UK between 1842 and 1862, the most ‘recent’ ones to the goldrush in the 1860s. Their courage and ‘fortitude’ and the hard lives they led makes life today seem very easy.
Jenni Ogden
I have two favorite couples, both in the same novel, "Crossing to Safety" by Wallace Stegner. This book also happens to be my favorite novel! Larry and Sally Morgan and Sid and Charity Lang become friends as young marrieds in the late 1930s. They meet in Madison, Wisconsin when Larry and Sid both have junior academic positions in the English department at the university. The Langs are 'old money' and the Morgans struggle financially but they become close friends, and their friendship lasts over decades, surviving many challenges. The reasons I enjoy them so much are many; each of the four is very different, the two couples remain faithful to their partners over the years (unusual in fiction about couples!), yet this is an engrossing story about the power of true friendship. The fact that it is so beautifully written by one of the greatest American novelists is also a major factor!
Jenni Ogden
The joy of working with words, and the pleasure of getting lost in my imagination instead of going to work for someone else!
Jenni Ogden
'A Drop in the Ocean' has a protagonist who is the opposite of me in may ways (she is a rather introverted lab-based neuroscientists at the beginning of the book, and I was a client-based clinical neuropsychologist and probably would never have been called introverted!), but there are some neuroscience sub-themes in the story. However many of the events in the story were based on my own experiences when I was younger and a volunteer turtle tagger on Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef. The part of the story set in Shetland was also based on a trip I had there not long ago.
Jenni Ogden
I'm currently pretty heavily involved in al the stuff that goes into the promotion and marketing of my first novel 'A Drop in the Ocean'—blog posts, Goodread's giveaways and promotions, etc etc. I am also revising my next novel.
Jenni Ogden
Write about a topic (or if a novel, about characters and places) that you love or are intrigued by; you'll be living and working with those topics or characters for a long time, so you'd better find them interesting!
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