NOTES: Reblogged with kind permission from https://willowcroft.blog/
Interview with Author Jadi Campbell
Here’s this week’s “Five Things Friday” feature author, Jadi Campbell! I come up with five random questions and the author answers them. (If you’re an author and want to join in, email me at croftwillow (at) yahoo (dot) com.)
(Oh, and it’s Shark Week btw–go out and hug a shark!)
Willow: What’s your favourite snack food (and/or drink) while writing?
Jadi Campbell: There are writers who snack while they write? I forget to eat. At some point my stomach growls and I know it’s time to shove back from the computer desk and go make lunch — or dinner.
Willow: What’s your most distracting “nemesis” when you’re trying to write?
Jadi Campbell: In a word: everything. If I’m not in a writing groove, I will happily scrub the sink. I try to convince myself that when I’m not writing, look! I’m doing something useful! If I’m desperate enough to scrub a sink, imagine how enticing it is to go outside or meet my friends. PS: When I’m in a writing groove, that desire to clean the apartment mysteriously vanishes.
Willow: If you could live anywhere in the world(s) or even another planet (real life or fictional), where (and when) would it be?
Jadi Campbell: Any spot where I can write with gorgeous scenery and good food will do. I like our 1,200-year-old town in southern Germany. I have serious wanderlust, and my husband and I love to travel. The hardest part of the coronavirus is that we can’t go explore a new part of the world.
Willow: If you could choose what animal (or plant) you could be reincarnated as, what would it be, and why?
Jadi Campbell: The loon. Once you’ve heard a loon calling in the wild, that voice will inform your imagination forever.
Willow: If you woke up and you were trapped in a painting for eternity, which one would you prefer it to be?
Jadi Campbell: A smallish Picasso painting of a street haunts me. That winding alley was filled with melancholy, promise, and timelessness. I don’t remember what museum I saw it in, or even what country. I haven’t been able to find the painting in an art book, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never see it again.
Thanks again, Jadi Campbell, for joining in my “Five Things Friday” blog feature. Visit her website at http://jadicampbell.com/, and read on for more information about her and her books!
Jadi Campbell is the author of four books: Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded. The Trail Back Out, her new collection of short stories, is available for purchase on August 23, 2020.
In The Trail Back Out, two strangers meet in the woods. Children wear masks. A gambler hides in the cellar during a Category Five hurricane. A wife considers a hit-man’s offer. Princess Rain Clouds searches for happiness. An entire village flees, a life is saved, and a tourist in Venice is melting. Everyone keeps trying to make sense of strange events far in the past or about to occur. Let these characters be your guides. Join them on the trail back out – to a familiar world, now unexpectedly changed.
Click on one of these links to order a copy:
Information on all my books is available here:
Being a writer almost always means feeling guilty about carving out time alone with a blank page of paper or a white computer screen. At the same time, being a writer means almost always feeling guilty for not creating time dedicated to empty paper/laptop.
I finally filled our balcony with planter boxes of flowers and herbs. We have more bees and pollinators than I’ve seen in years. Nature is loving this “Stop everything” business! And I got down to serious construction of Book #4, a collection of short stories.
This was lockdown, so it’s not like I could go anywhere else, right? Wasn’t the Universe handing me exactly the time and space I needed to write my next book? I took my pages or laptop out the balcony and went to work.
I don’t know about you other writers out there, but the Muse makes me toil for months on end before she grants me an audience. I write every day, drudge work, one word after the next for my daily quota. Trust me: this is not inspired writing. It’s showing up and doing the job. I spent a few months planting my ass in front of my computer or my pages to revise, thinking, “What the hell ever made me think this will be any good?”
Now, half a year later, I’m getting ready to publish. This is my corona virus book; I could even title it, How I Spent My Summer Lockdown.
NOTES: Text and Photos © Jadi Campbell 2020. To see Uwe’s photos and pics from our trips go to 
The chairs were all covered in white with purple and saffron yellow sashes tied on the backs. These matched the flower canopy over the dais. The canopy had been made of elaborate long drapes of thousands of fresh flowers.
The Hindu men’s turbans matched the bows on the chairs. Really a wild parade of colors. Gorgeous!
NOTES: Text © Jadi Campbell 2020. Quotation from 
We’re still in lockdown in Germany, with the restrictions slowly easing. I took these photos on March 23rd when I went for a long walk to get some sunshine and stretch my legs:
I become aware of an intense fluttering sound. It takes me a minute, but finally I identify it: the wind is blowing so hard that it shakes the police tape around the other children’s Spielplatz. The tape’s rattling is the only thing I can hear beside the birds.