Jacobs, who began her career as a writer and editor at magazines like Redbook before writing fiction full-time, devotes a lot of effort to connecting with her readers both online and in real life. "I like the idea of having a community with readers."
For The Friday Night Knitting Club, she has finds herself calling in to book clubs almost every day – in fact, she counted 37 calls in April. "What's neat about that, and this gets back to having that community of readers, is that it's nice to have interaction with readers. Because writing is so solitary, it's nice to hear what readers think and to hear their emotions and responses. It's very enriching."
She and her husband –- her "tech half" –- created a website for The Friday Night Knitting Club. It uses the fun conceit that Peri, one of the characters who takes web design classes, had created a site for the Walker and Daughter store. Jacobs pointed out that some visitors were puzzled to learn that neither the store nor the characters were real, however.
For the new novel, Comfort Food, the website idea is that the fictitious cooking channel is promoting a show, which happens to have the same cast of characters as Jacobs' book, of course. The site offers information on the book and characters plus a game, quiz, and a recipe swap, featuring some of the foods mentioned in the book and inviting readers to submit their own.
It's not just the Walker and Daughter website that makes some readers think Knitting Club is more truth than fiction. "People I know tend to pick out the nicest, sweetest characters in the book and tell me on the sly that they know – and they're quite serious – that they were the inspiration." Is it ever true? "No." She also added: "I have a lot of people vying for Anita because she's so nice. But nobody's vying for Darwin" – the strident feminist who initially can't see the value in the knitting club.
"Of all the characters, Darwin is most like me, but how I was 20 years ago when I was a teenager," Jacobs explained. "My interpretation of feminism when I was a teen was to reject everything any domestically inclined woman had to teach me or tell me and simply focus on going to school, getting good grades, being professional I had this black and white certainty, but I'd never been out in the real world. My mother was still making meals for me."
Jacobs hears from readers who wonder if Friday Night Knitting Club's main character Georgia Walker was a real person, or even, oddly enough, if Jacobs herself is Georgia. "People often ask me 'which character is you,' and it's hard to explain that none of them are me, but all of them are me, but none of them are me, and have that make any sense," Jacobs said.
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