After Today, More on the Tiny White Arm and Such

Hi. It's me again, telling you about the book ONE LAST TIME because today's the day! Driving Sideways is finally in bookstores after 29 long months of incubation!

What people are saying about the book:

"Driving Sideways is a gorgeous novel -- I LOVED it!!"
-- Marian Keyes, author of Anybody Out There?

"A hopeful and hilarious debut...Jess Riley may well be my new favorite author."
--Jen Lancaster, author of Bitter is the New Black

"Smart and funny without being forced, sentimental without being maudlin."
--Booklist magazine

“It made me blush several times.”
--my Mother-in-law Patti

Target also picked the book as a Break-Out title this summer! But it won’t be on their shelves until June 19, so don’t go there today unless you need toothpaste and paper towels or something.

If you buy it today, it comes with the following:

• A spine (inspiration for those of us born in the self-deprecating wing of the hospital)


• No jacket, because who needs one? It’s finally spring in Wisconsin!


• 111,840 pre-screened, carefully-selected words placed in a pleasant order


• My eternal gratitude and a glass of wine if I ever meet you or see you again. And since you’re reading this, I really do hope I meet you or see you again. Because I probably like you. Or whatever.

So you could take your OWN expensive road trip this summer, or you could buy Driving Sideways (for less than the cost of four gallons of gas!) and live vicariously through some people I made up. But if you do take your own road trip, you can also bring my book to read while you wait for your car to be fixed. In case it breaks down, like the Toyota did when I took the very same roadtrip with my BFF Cindy. And you can listen to the Driving Sideways iMix, with songs that I listened to while writing the book, plus a few I listened to while just kind of driving around. Sideways.

So if you would like to buy the book for yourself or many other people in your life (and I hope you do because I would like to make you laugh and/or blush), you can order it on amazon, Powells, Barnes & Noble, Target, Booksense, or Random House.

Or you can pick it up at your local bookstore. If they don’t have it, throw a tantrum.

I’m totally joking. Please don’t do that.

Unless you’re a toddler. Then you might have an excuse.

But wait! There’s more!

Tuesday I am guest-blogging, providing A’s to some excellent Q's, or otherwise being featured in some way, shape, or form (not a large sphere, despite all the cheese curds I ate late night) with Tia, Caryn, Sue, DeeMarie, Shelly at Not the Daddy, The Debutante Ball, Suzy Soro, and TX Poppet.

Edited to add these Wednesday & Thursday blog stops: an interview at Pam Writes Romance and with Joanne Rendell, and a guest blog at Drunk Writer Talk...and JellyJules has made my signature summer salad (now with delicious photo!). Tomorrow, check out Mommy Confidential, Gorillabuns, and December, who will be listing thirteen essentials to take on a road trip.

Also, the blatant self-promotion will eventually taper off and this blog will soon return to its regularly scheduled programming involving my dog, things I found in the backyard, recipe mishaps, and something you WON'T want to miss next Tuesday. I promise, you'll like it.

On Giving Up (Or Not)

This is a post for anyone who has ever felt like giving up. You’re a teacher, you’re training for a marathon, you’re playing bass in a band on the brink, you’re writing novel after novel yet hitting wall after wall. No matter your passion, you will likely reach a day where you feel like giving up on the very thing that feeds your soul—perhaps the thing you have come to feel defines you, in certain limited terms at least. But one day your muse has evaporated, you’re too tired to take another step, you take a long look in the mirror and think, “Why am I doing this, really? This is too hard. To hell with it. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Whenever you feel that way…maybe you’ve run into some tangles at work and you can’t unravel them; maybe you’re covered in Cheerios and spit-up and poop for the 265th day and you feel like little more than a toddler punching bag; maybe you just moved to Georgia and you feel just a bit lost and lonely—a stranger in a strange land.

Whenever you feel that way:

Download this song immediately and listen to it on a loop: “Art” by Louque, from the So Long album.

Keep running. Your time’s coming.

How many days like those have I had? Too many to count. Specific to writing, in my case, because writing is the thing I must do, and when that little train isn’t chugging along on the track I want, it’s a painful thing indeed. But after I simmer down and tune out the needling voices saying discouraging things in my ear, I return to the center and start again. I have to. It is my first love—the one thing that makes me still feel like me whenever I start to lose my mental or emotional footing.

So. I’m glad I didn’t give up writing when I sure felt like it a few years ago, because then I’d never have been able to photograph a story I wrote in actual book form sitting on a stack of old rejection letters:




And I'd never have received this amazing message from the awesomely talented Marian Keyes:

"Dear Jess, I LOVED it!!!!!!!!! I've just finished it and so sorry for the delay. I'm humbled that you say you like my books because I think your writing is genius. This is a gorgeous novel, it's so so so funny and sparky, yet very touching. I found it HUGELY entertaining and I loved Leigh and all the characters, you handled her illness with such sensitivity because it would have been easy to tip over into maudlin sentimentality and you didn't. Really, I thought it was great, your voice, I love its irreverence. Congratulations on writing such an enjoyable, uplifting book and I wish you every success and happiness with it

Marian xxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

I think I broke a lightbulb screaming when I read her note. I know every day won't be rainbows and shiny teddy bear farts, but damn does it feel good to look back and think, Thank God I didn't quit.

I'd like to close this post with some gratuitous nephew footage. Because really, what's more hopeful than a giggling baby: