I couldn't resist a memoir entitled: But Enough About Me: How A Small-Town Girl Went From The Shag Carpet To The Red Carpet. The title grabbed me; the book entranced me. Jancee Dunn (read the book and find out why her parents gave her that name) was a small town girl from the suburbs of New Jersey when she met somebody, handed her a copy of her resume and became a reporter for Rolling Stone. Nothing can be that simple. Nothing.

When I had the opportunity to do an email interview with Jancee, I had to find out if it was a really an accident of fate that gave her this opportunity:

It was a complete accident. I had hoped since I was a kid to work at a
magazine, but there would have been no way that I would have had the
gumption, or the ego, to apply for a job at a national magazine. I had
a half-finished state school education, middling grades, and while at
the time, I thought my giant Jersey girl perm looked fantastic, I also
knew that there was no way I could ever pass as a New Yorker.
I probably would have ended up as a reporter for a local paper, at most.

I always find it weird when people say they took an English class their last semester in college and decided then that they should become a writer. Fortunately...

I did, even as a kid (is that creepy?) From about the age of six
onward, I have always been writing things in my head. I don’t know
where it comes from, exactly. And I definitely want to be read, too – I
don’t want to write just for my own gratification. A few months ago, I
saw a woman reading my book once on the subway and I burst into tears!
This is all I ever wanted. When I was writing this book, I would wake
up in the morning, put on my ratty ‘writing sweatpants,’ get a mug of
coffee and begin. It was the happiest I’ve ever been.

Originally Jancee was going to emphasis her many celebrity interviews. She was talked into writing a family memoir. I wondered if her parents tried to talk her out of this.

My parents tried to, but I would say to them, "Look, you people need to help me sell my book. You're retired now. Let's think about elder care. If you want me to foot that bill down the line, play ball." When they would balk about some story, I would say, "Do you want the Platinum Plan, the Gold, or the Bronze? Do you want a private nurse when the time comes, or a state-run facility?" That shut them up.

Jancee did have an edge when she decided to write her memoir:

My edge was my celebrity encounters. I knew that was my way into publishing. I resisted pimping out those stories for a long time but finally realized that I had to do it. There's such a ravenous hunger for behind-the-scenes celebrity stories.

Fortunately Jancee's publisher's wanted to emphasis the family aspects. But she did have all those years of writing for Rolling Stone. As Jancee's so close to her family I asked what her parents thought about her spending so much time with rock stars.

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