Stationery Freaks

Rob: 00:00

Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Stationery Freaks with me, Rob Lambert, and, of course

Helen: 00:06

That was me, Helen Lesowski.

Rob: 00:08

And, Helen, we have a very, very special guest today on the It's Jenny Cain. Hi, Jenny.

Jenny: 00:15

Hello there.

Rob: 00:17

Excellent. Good stuff. And so I'm gonna hand over to you, Helen, because you've organized this. You brought it all together. And I'm just gonna pass over to you now and just let you run with the rest of the, introduction piece.

Helen: 00:29

Yeah, you'll be asking questions. Know you.

Rob: 00:31

Of course I will.

Helen: 00:32

Of course. So Jenny, thank you so much for agreeing to come on this. So Jenny, Jenny Cain has been referred to several times, even obliquely on this podcast, because Jenny is in fact my lovely mentor and teacher for my writing course. And she has written stacks of books. And Jenny, I think I've got the right numbers, but I think you're gonna correct me.

Helen: 00:57

So I think as Jenny Cain, you've written 21 books.

Jenny: 01:01

A few more.

Helen: 01:02

Is that right? And including some children's books as well, found out, which I didn't know.

Jenny: 01:07

Yeah, I've written two picture books for children, yeah.

Helen: 01:11

Is that as Jenny Cain, yes? Did you

Jenny: 01:13

Yes, that was Jenny Cain, yeah. I just wondered if I could, so I had a go and it turned out I could. Yeah,

Helen: 01:19

great. And then you've written, I thought you'd written 15 books as Jennifer Ash, which is more your historical fiction, isn't Is that right?

Jenny: 01:28

Yeah, I'm not quite sure actually, I've never counted, but I suspect it's a couple more. Two came out last week, so a couple more probably. Sorry, that sounded horribly casual.

Helen: 01:42

That's right. And then I understand as well that you have under KJB, which is your more adult writing, you have like 40 books out or 40 stories out.

Jenny: 01:56

I think it's two seventeen of those to be fair.

Helen: 02:01

Oh, wow.

Jenny: 02:02

Wow. But it was, I mean, they're mostly shorts and we're going back a little bit now. That's how I started back in the day.

Helen: 02:11

Yeah. So listeners should know if you're going off to read Jenna's stuff, the KJB stuff is more X rated, whereas the Jennifer Ash and Jenny Kane stuff is more traditionally acceptable. Is that the wrong word? Is it the wrong word really?

Jenny: 02:30

You can show your granny Jenny and Jennifer Ash. Very much over 18s only for the KJB stuff.

Helen: 02:40

Yes, but that said, I know that you've won awards for that. So it's pretty good.

Jenny: 02:46

Yeah, thank you. I'm blushing now.

Helen: 02:48

Making you blush, that's quite good. And I know on top of all of this, you have been part of, and have in fact got your own loads of anthologists. I think you told me last time I saw you, you were talking to several people at the time, and I'm sure you said something like in the '90s, if I remember correctly, of anthologists.

Jenny: 03:10

Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, at least. I know it sounds really awful. I mean, must bear in mind I've been doing this for twenty years. So it just sort of slowly climbs up. But yeah, 200 plus short stories.

Jenny: 03:26

They're all in various anthologies. Yeah, why Congratulations

Helen: 03:32

for such a massively wide spread of work out there. It's just brilliant.

Rob: 03:40

Prolific is the right word there. It's brilliant. Awesome. Can't wait to jump into

Jenny: 03:45

think obsessive is obsessive Obsessive.

Helen: 03:48

And as is obvious is you also teach quite a lot, which is fabulous for people like me. And what's really nice is you teach remotely, which means that I've been on classes with you with people from The States as well as from The UK and in fact, Italy. And that's really lovely, I think, is the fact that you just need to be English speaking. You don't need to be based in The UK. I think that's really great.

Jenny: 04:15

I love it. I must admit that's the one good thing that COVID did. Was it took me from just teaching in person which is all I did before which I did love doing but it meant that I was very much confined to the Devon area where I live but now of course like you say international and our regulars from Tuscany, Vienna, The States as you say. And it's great because you get to meet people that you would just never normally meet and it's really lovely. And I think it makes a really nice dynamic during the class to have lots of different cultures coming together.

Helen: 04:54

It is weird though, when you're doing dinner and somebody or you've just had dinner and somebody else is busy doing breakfast. That's kind of cute.

Jenny: 05:02

I have had an incident a little while ago where I was doing one of my K classes. It was just how to write erotica and a gentleman joined the class. It was seven in the evening and it was pitch black when his video came on and I was like, Oh, can you adjust the light? He said, Well, not really. It's 02:00 in the morning.

Helen: 05:24

Oh, am. I know.

Jenny: 05:27

Just try not to wake the family. It was strange.

Helen: 05:29

So much work out there and the teaching as well. And this obviously is a podcast about stationery. And I happened to know that you love stationery because you made a throwaway comment one time where you referred to your emotional support pencil case. And I wonder if you'd like to tell me a little bit about So

Jenny: 05:53

I have this little pencil case. It really is very small. It can only fit in four or five pens, six an absolute push. I have it because it's light and compact, it's silvery grey and it has little black sort of almost art deco swirls all over it. So the best thing about this pencil case is because it's such a nice size it fits neatly in the palm of my hand so that when I'm not writing I can hold it and it makes me feel better.

Jenny: 06:31

I know that sounds dark but my natural state is writing and when I'm not doing it I'm not quite me So if I hold it in my hand, then I feel sort of connected to the words.

Helen: 06:46

Oh, that's very,

Rob: 06:47

that's That's cool.

Helen: 06:48

So do you have I don't

Jenny: 06:50

know if it's comforting or scary.

Helen: 06:53

Do you have particular pens and such like that you keep in it? Mean, you kind of anything that makes a mark will do?

Jenny: 07:00

Pretty much. I tend to stick to Bic because they last forever and they're really easy to write with and I have a bit of a color coding system I tend to write in blue and edit in red and green and then if I have any words that I think I've overused I'll write a list in black. It's all very routine and subscribed. I'm very much a creature of habit. It's ironic because I don't write long hand anymore but I still need the pens because I make copious notes on scrap paper as I go.

Helen: 07:38

So do you, that's a good, lovely segue into my next question, which is, you, you write obviously electronically rather than long hand you just said, but do you have like notepads that you collect and adore or is it any scrap piece of paper?

Jenny: 07:53

Well, I have both. So as you'll know from when you come to my classes, I make notes the whole time that I'm talking to my I think it's really really important to pay close attention to each individual person and make little notes as I go so that if there's anything I think that can help them in the future I've always got like a little record so I can do my best for them. So when I finished those with those bits of paper, the other side is clit so I use them as my scrap. Yeah. So I always have a pile of those next to me all the time.

Jenny: 08:27

I've got some here now And whenever I have any ideas or things I need to remember I just write on them like lists and lists. Having said that, every single novel I write has its own notebook.

Helen: 08:40

Yes, now Callaghan was saying the same thing. So how do you How do you choose a new note pack for the next novel?

Jenny: 08:49

It's a very careful process because if the notebook is wrong, the novel won't work.

Helen: 08:56

You know Helen says the same thing!

Jenny: 08:58

Oh well there you go no it's a really superstitious thing but writers are a weird bunch I'll be honest. So the book I'm writing at the moment unfortunately I can't tell you what it's called because I've signed a contract not to. But it's set at the seaside and so it was really important that the picture on the front of the notebook reflected that. So it's actually a seaside scene and it's got some boats in the distance like a little harbour and it really reflects the story that I'm writing. If I'm writing anything about gardens I wrote a series called The Potting Shed series based around a garden centre so all of the books for that have some sort of flowers on the front.

Jenny: 09:42

Oh really? I've read those.

Helen: 09:44

Yeah, oh thank you. It was

Jenny: 09:46

because even when I was writing the adult stuff, covers needed to reflect in that they were either bright red or black with jacket lines on or something. Gave the atmosphere of the books because all my adult stuff was quite dark. So yeah, it's got to. I went through a phase a few months ago of using up my kids old school notebooks to save paper.

Helen: 10:12

Oh really?

Jenny: 10:13

And then I went through six months of not getting any book contracts. Got rid of those notebooks, went back to my choose the correct notebook and promptly got on a contract, So Yeah. Superstitious or not?

Helen: 10:25

I'd be I'd be following that superstitious. I'm so not superstitious at all.

Rob: 10:31

Jenny, you you so you don't write longhand, but you've got these dedicated notebook for each book with a with a sort of matching theme or the inspiration and the the superstition piece. I'm I'm curious. I'm I'm an aspiring writer as is Helen. What goes into those notebooks then? Is it sort of plot outlines, characters, notes, scribbles?

Rob: 10:48

You know, what kind of things do you write into those notebooks?

Jenny: 10:52

The most important thing of all, Helen will be nodding as I say this. So whenever anybody writes a novel, my best advice to them would be to keep a chapter by chapter plan in an accompanying notebook. And by that I mean every time you write a chapter once you've finished it you just write a mini version of that chapter on one page of a notebook. A potted version of what is happening in that chapter so that when you've finished your novel you have got a complete potted version of that book right there and you can look at it, it will help you notice if you've got any plot holes, if a character that you need is getting not quite enough airtime and most important of all when you come to write your synopsis or your blurb at the end rather than have to wade through your entire novel which let's face it could be three hundred four hundred pages long you've got this little version in the notebook all handy that you can work from and it just makes life very much easier. It also helps you keep track of timelines, like you say, character outlines.

Jenny: 12:06

I tend to have a list of words I tend to overuse that I want to look out for to make sure that people aren't thinking or thwarting or looking on every single page. So it's really like the little Bible that goes alongside each

Rob: 12:20

That's fascinating.

Helen: 12:22

And you keep your notes for the plot in with your character stuff? And so everything about that book is in one place? Because I know some people keep the characters in one book and then the plot stuff in another.

Jenny: 12:38

No, I'm far too untidy. I would lose something.

Rob: 12:43

So, Jenny, once you've once you've finished a book and and you've you've sent it off, you've published it, it's it's it's written. What do you do with those notebooks? Do you have you know, we've talked at the start about these many hundreds of books that you've written. Have you got the corresponding hundreds of notebooks stored away somewhere?

Jenny: 12:57

I do. Brilliant. Yeah. My husband despairs what our loft is for. I can't bear to get rid of them.

Rob: 13:04

Yeah. Understandably.

Jenny: 13:05

I was I was asked if I'd auctioned some of the early ones off at one point, and I can't bear to get rid of them. Aw. Yeah. Do you

Rob: 13:13

ever go back through them? Do you ever sort of dig them out and have a quick look through some of the older ones?

Jenny: 13:17

I did. I did. It's funny. We're in the middle of a moving house, so I've been getting a load of the old stuff out of the loft, as you can imagine. Mhmm.

Rob: 13:25

And I

Jenny: 13:25

was flicking through the notebook for a book called The Collector which was my first ever solo novella and I was reading that and thinking what was I thinking? Terrible, terrible. I'd like to think that my style has improved since then.

Helen: 13:43

So on top of this, I wanted to talk to you. So you've got, we've talked kind of covered about pens, which you're happy to write anything so long as they come in your little support pencil case, which is adorable. And you pick a book for a novel, but you go through, we just talked at the beginning about how much stuff you've actually written. You must go through several notebooks, I don't know, a year in order to churn out that much. I I know this is like your job.

Helen: 14:16

This is your entire job, right? So it's entirely feasible that you can churn out three novels in a year. I just find it, given that I'm still working on mine after eighteen months, it just feels like aspirational to be able to go through that many. But you're going through three novels a year or three notebooks a year, is that right?

Jenny: 14:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've just written a series of books for Robin O'Shea with the 1980s TV show which has been celebrating its fortieth anniversary. So I've done a lot of those and they're quite short. They call them novels, I think of them as novellas. I don't think they're quite long enough to be novels and I tend to use the same notebooks for those so rather than have one per novella I just keep going until the notebook is used up otherwise it would be ridiculous proportions.

Jenny: 15:07

But yeah, so three books a year is three novels per year all my god there's never any room left in them. They're always absolutely capacity by then because I tend to draw maps and all sorts of things.

Helen: 15:21

So I should add in as well here that I happen to know that you actually have a doctorate that is related to the Robin of Sherwood period. Is that right? Am I right in thinking

Jenny: 15:32

about Yeah, I do, yeah.

Helen: 15:35

So although you're doing the Robin of Sherwood stuff, you've also done some historical novels that are based around that kind of time. So how did you get into the Robin of Sherwood stuff? I mean, is all his notebooks green? I don't know.

Jenny: 15:47

The Robin of Sherwood notebooks are indeed good. They are green and they have got trees on them, I am so predictable. Long story short, when I was 14 I was seriously ill and off school for quite a long time and my dear old dad, bless him, went to radio rentals and hired one of those newfangled video recorder things so that I could watch television during the day because I don't know if you're old enough to remember but there was only, you know, ITV, BBC one and BBC two and that was it. So during the day there was nothing really to watch. So, he brought it home and practiced recording and the first thing that was on to record was an episode of Robin and Sherwood which I had not seen before.

Jenny: 16:36

This turned out to be the last series and the next day I watched that episode nine times on the top in one I was absolutely mesmerized by the whole the whole legend, the whole thing.

Helen: 16:50

Wow.

Jenny: 16:50

So, it got me not just into that show but into the legend generally. Medieval England. I was absolutely hooked and I should say I ended up doing PhD on medieval criminality and literature,

Helen: 17:09

which is lovely. It's medieval criminality sounds great, doesn't it?

Jenny: 17:14

It does sounds awesome. That sounds like a title of a book

Rob: 17:16

in itself. Brilliant stuff. I I'm originally from Sheffield. So we used to drop down to Nottingham every so often at school and and go into the woods and we're always looking out for Robin of Sherwood, etcetera. So, yeah, yeah, it's fascinating.

Jenny: 17:31

Yeah. Mean, ironically, I didn't realize the time but I grew up in Wiltshire and that's where they actually filmed it.

Helen: 17:37

Oh, So,

Jenny: 17:38

there I was being obsessed with it and they were filming it down the road in Lacock and Bradford On Avon.

Rob: 17:45

That's amazing.

Jenny: 17:46

But I must admit, talking of notebooks, one of the things that I did use for a while and I stopped because it felt really sort of narcissistic and egocentric and I didn't like it But I had a load of notebooks made up with my book covers on the front.

Rob: 18:03

Oh that's cool. And

Jenny: 18:05

so all my Folvil Chronicles which is the medieval murder mystery series that Helen was mentioning there when she said I wrote some stories inspired by my PhD. And I made them up because they sold quite well when I went to the Mentions and I started using them myself but it just felt wrong because the cover on the front was obviously the cover of a book I'd already written. Mhmm. So I I just couldn't do it. Oh, okay.

Rob: 18:35

So in in when you're looking for a new notebook, Jenny, obviously, you've mentioned the the colors or the scheme and the the front colors, etcetera, and the pictures and what have you on them. Do you look for a particular, I guess, size, dimension, type of paper, or the particular brands that you gravitate towards? Is there anything like that that so does it have to take particular look and feel, I guess, beyond the cover?

Jenny: 18:58

It's got a the feel's important. The paper quality's gotta be good because I spend a lot of time with this thing and it's gotta last. So flimsy thin paper is not going to last just because it's got to be a hard wearing practical item. I prefer spiral bound if I can get it just for ease of moving around. Yeah.

Jenny: 19:21

I find it much more user friendly. And I prefer a five rather than a four just because I carry things around with me all the time. I'm always on the move. I travel a lot with my teaching and to do public appearances and stuff so got to fit in the laptop bag. But having said that my current notebook that I was talking about just now is not spiral bound and it's it's A four, sorry.

Jenny: 19:52

Simply because it was absolutely the right look for the book and that came first.

Helen: 19:57

I was gonna say as well, I know you're always traveling, you'd say, I happen to know and I'm quite envious that you genuinely work out of a cafe. And it's just my perfect world. Want that life. Jenny has a deal with a local cafe where she works and she has a set table. It's like an author in residence kind of event, which I think is great.

Jenny: 20:18

That's brilliant.

Rob: 20:19

So do they do they sort of like do do they mark off the table with, like, tape around it and everything to save it for you? Is it is it like that? Is it got reserved sign on it?

Jenny: 20:28

It's worse than that. There's a plaque on

Helen: 20:30

the wall.

Jenny: 20:32

There's a permanent metal plaque on the wall saying Jenny Kane's Corner and I wouldn't like you to think that that was my idea. I turned up one day I've been going there for eighteen months writing in the corner eighteen months. I never said anything, they just assumed that I was like a student or something but of course after a while they said oh you know what you're doing and what have you so I told them that I was a novelist and they were like oh right okay and then eighteen months after that I turned up and they'd kindly arranged for me to do a book launch there, a book called 'Another Cup of Coffee'. And when I got there to do the book launch this plaque was on the wall next to my table And that was, oh goodness gracious, it must be twelve, thirteen years ago.

Rob: 21:21

Oh, wow. And so what does your, if you don't mind me asking, what does your day in the coffee shop look like? Know, what do you sort of turn up in the morning and write and, you know, do you spend all day there? Is it a is it a sort of like a a set schedule working pattern that you have?

Jenny: 21:37

I'm very, I'm very, very routine y. I'm usually there by 07:00 in the morning.

Rob: 21:43

Wow.

Jenny: 21:44

I will have a break about twelve. I will nip home which isn't very far away and grab some lunch but I'll be back within forty minutes And I will stay there usually till about three and that's when the brain goes, uh-uh, no more. And I will go home and that's when I start doing other related things like writing new workshops or, you know, admin for the retreats I run, that sort of thing.

Helen: 22:18

We'll put links in to all of this stuff, Jenny.

Rob: 22:21

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, as as Helen said, I mean, it's perfect lifestyle. It sounds awesome. It sounds brilliant.

Jenny: 22:29

It's it's fun, but, it's hard work too.

Rob: 22:32

Yeah. There's long long days, you know, because you're obviously there seven till three,

Jenny: 22:35

and then you you're doing

Rob: 22:36

the workshop stuff as well. I mean, that's a a huge long day. Is that is that Monday to Friday? Do you tend to do that sort of stuff on the weekend as well? Or

Jenny: 22:43

It's it's six and a half days a week. I have Sunday morning off. That's how

Helen: 22:50

you get to churn out three books a year, Jenny.

Jenny: 22:54

We, I I mean, that is the payoff. That is the payoff. It's it's it's great life. I would not swap it but if you want to have the the turnover and and meet the publisher deadlines, that's that's what it means.

Helen: 23:10

Yeah. I I do two an hour or two most days and it just takes, there's a set number of hours, right? And the more hours you can do, the faster you can get through it. I mean, there's a set number of hours is not quite right, but you have to get through the right amount of work, don't you?

Jenny: 23:28

You do. And I mean, love the teaching. I'm really lucky with the students that I have. Are also That's good job, I love it. You're very kind.

Jenny: 23:38

But in all honesty, you have to have the income because although it's, you know, I'm very, very lucky, you know, I do have novels coming out, you of course only get paid twice a year and you have to live in between time. You know, that's where the other strands come from.

Rob: 23:56

So do you do you, Jenny, write more than one book at a time, or is it is it like this book, get it finished?

Jenny: 24:03

I'm generally writing two at once. Okay. So at the moment I'm doing my I think of as my main novel, the one that's got a deadline, I'll do in the mornings. And then the afternoons it will depend. I'll have my secondary novel which is one that I will probably self publish because I do it a bit of both which I'm not on a deadline for and I like to do a little bit of Or if I have some student editing that needs doing, maybe one of my novel NES students or one of my mentor students, I will concentrate on their novels in the afternoon.

Jenny: 24:40

Yeah. So it depends what I'm doing.

Rob: 24:42

That's great. And do you ever, you know, with your notebooks and what have you, do you ever sort of wake up in the middle of the night with a new plot idea or a change you wanna make or some inspiration and and you just have to have your notebook with you? Is that does that does that happen to you?

Jenny: 24:56

Well, it happens to me, but I don't tend to act on it. I think my husband would hit me over the head if I turned. I always hope I remember, and then, of course, I never do.

Rob: 25:07

Jenny, are you happy if if we do a little Desert Island stationery? Has Helen given you any prewire as to what this is at all?

Jenny: 25:16

No. She just said that she would be asking for five items that I might take on the Desert Island. But, beyond that, I don't know.

Rob: 25:24

That's it. That's it.

Helen: 25:25

That's pretty much it. Yeah.

Rob: 25:27

That's it.

Jenny: 25:27

Yeah. Well, there we go then.

Rob: 25:29

Yeah, we did. We did an episode on this, Helen, didn't we? Probably two years ago, maybe even more actually, where we had our five items and, you know, we kind of approached what life on a desert island was differently. And that's what made that end that very entertaining. Then every guest that we have on, we ask them at during the the episode whether they've got those five essential items if they were stranded on a desert island.

Rob: 25:51

So, thankfully, Helen's prewired you to this. So, Jenny, you know, what's your first item that you could not be without stationary related, obviously, on a desert island?

Jenny: 26:03

Okay. Well, it's one of those situations, isn't it? Sort of chicken and egg. Do you say the notebook first or the pencil case Cause they don't tend to operate separately. I guess it'd be the pencil case.

Jenny: 26:15

Do we count the pencil case as a stationary item and the pens that it contains separately or are they one and the same?

Helen: 26:21

If we go back to that original episode, Rob, I think you'd find that I would say they're separate, but you ordered a 12 pack of pencils or something. So I think from Jenny's point of view, we'll take your approach.

Rob: 26:33

Yeah, I think that's fine. I think that's one item. Yeah, I bundled in, I think it was a 100 pencils into a box, which qualified as one Rob

Helen: 26:40

cheated horrifically.

Rob: 26:42

Oh, come on, Ellen. Were you were trying to put hand cream in there as stationery at one point. Well,

Jenny: 26:50

do you know what? It's whatever makes it work. So I would say then that my first item would be my pencil case full of my pens.

Helen: 27:00

Yeah.

Jenny: 27:01

Yeah. And it would have to have at least three or four because obviously I wouldn't want my pens to run out, that would be a disaster.

Helen: 27:08

Well you need color coding as well Jenny. I mean I assume you're going be writing because I've never known you'd not be.

Jenny: 27:15

I would just be a monster courting disaster as the phrase goes. Yeah, no definitely. So if I've got pence case as my first one, then obviously a notebook. Yes. Would be the second.

Jenny: 27:32

And I I would be inclined to say notebooks. And even if that took up two options, then notebooks.

Rob: 27:40

Oh, we'll let you have the we'll let you have the one for that one as well, Jenny. Yeah. Big pack of big pack of notebooks. Yeah.

Jenny: 27:46

You see that?

Rob: 27:46

I was

Jenny: 27:46

gonna say that's make it a pack of three because that covers me for a year then.

Helen: 27:53

This is how Rob does it. He cheats, Jenny. He just

Jenny: 27:56

I just

Rob: 27:57

bend the rules a little bit. Bend the rules a little bit. Yeah. Because you you know, you got your three notebooks, you've got your three novels, and it's a year. So, we'd like to hope and expect that you might be rescued in that time as well.

Rob: 28:07

So, that's spot on. Yeah. I think that counts as as two. So we've got pencil case full of pens, we've got three notebooks. What's your third item then, Jenny?

Jenny: 28:16

My third item would be a strong piece of card or a clipboard or a folder that I could rest on.

Rob: 28:26

Oh, that's good one.

Jenny: 28:27

Because I am not very good at balancing notebooks on my lap or my knees. I usually have to rest on something. So a rest of some sort would be my my third item. Then I could write anytime, anywhere, any place.

Helen: 28:44

That sounds great. I think you've seen a floor in both mine and Rob's original list. I don't think either of us thought about that at all, Rob.

Rob: 28:51

No, no, to be honest, I was thinking about survival and what I could steal from you. So no, we've got very different approaches as we enter into this. Jenny, so you've got a clipboard or a bit of card to rest on so you can write anywhere. That's awesome. Yeah, we definitely had not considered that one.

Rob: 29:09

What's item number four?

Jenny: 29:10

Okay. So number four, is a bit of a wild card because I don't need this for writing, but I think a really good sturdy ruler for swatting anything that tried to get near me whilst I was writing, be it an insect or rodent or evers, just picking it out of the way so I could crack on.

Helen: 29:32

Alternative uses for stationery. Awesome.

Rob: 29:35

That's great. That's gold. Absolutely.

Jenny: 29:40

And again, the last one, again, I wouldn't normally use in the normal course of my day, but I thought drawing pins might be quite useful because then I could draw maps in the notebook, rip them out, and then draw and pin them to a tree for reference so I could see them while I was writing. Genius.

Rob: 29:59

Genius. Yeah. That is genius. Yeah.

Jenny: 30:02

Yeah. I think maybe I've overthought this rather than that. No.

Rob: 30:05

No. That's that's gold. That's gold. I I think at some point, we might compile everybody's together and we would have a a survival kit made of stationary. This is do

Jenny: 30:14

that. I I mean, you know, there are so many things that we could utilize. I mean, obviously, that's my five, but, you know, you could get a packet of paper clips, link them all together, and you've got chain rope, anything you need to tie anything with.

Rob: 30:32

Yeah. Definitely. You could attach

Jenny: 30:34

it to your ruler and you've you've made

Rob: 30:35

your weapon even stronger there with pointy sharps on it sharp bits on it as well.

Jenny: 30:39

There you go. Some sort of slingshot mechanism with a rubber. Plastic bands as well. Yeah. Well, we're thinking lateral thinking going on here.

Jenny: 30:48

This is good.

Helen: 30:48

Introducing you to I feel I've created a monster somehow.

Jenny: 30:53

That's brilliant. Love it.

Rob: 30:55

So just to reiterate that Jetty's five items is pencil case, full of pens, notebooks, three as a as a minimum, hopefully, clipboard and card to rest on to write, and a ruler to swat away anything animal like or, you know, insect y like. And then finally, it was drawing pins so you could make maps and stick them on trees so you knew how to navigate the abandoned island, the desert island.

Jenny: 31:19

That's right.

Rob: 31:20

Brilliant.

Helen: 31:20

Awesome.

Rob: 31:21

That's great. Thank you, Jenny.

Helen: 31:23

And I think that's, all we've got time for, really.

Rob: 31:26

So, Jenny, where can people find you if they wanna know more about you and the books that you've written?

Jenny: 31:31

Okay. So the best place to find me is on my website, which is simply jennykane.co.uk, and it's kane with a k. I'm also all over social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it. I'm very easy to find. And if anybody is in doubt, the easiest way to find me at all is just to write Jenny Kane's Mars Bar scones into Google, and I'll come up top of the list.

Rob: 31:58

Everyone's gonna do it. I'm gonna do that.

Jenny: 32:01

I have

Rob: 32:01

to show. Mars Bar Skynes, Jenny Kane. Okay, awesome. And can people find details of obviously your courses? I don't know whether they're open for for new students, but

Jenny: 32:11

can they find details of all

Rob: 32:12

that stuff on there as well?

Jenny: 32:14

There is a separate website for the courses, imaginecreativewriting.co.uk. I will apologize in advance, it's a little bit in need of updating at the moment because I'm absolutely at capacity with my students. But there will be new courses in the near future. So if people are interested, they're, you know, very welcome to get in touch, and I will be upgrading for the new classes soon.

Rob: 32:40

Okay. And that was imaginecreativewriting.co.uk. So good.

Jenny: 32:45

Thank you so much, Jenny. That's been absolutely brilliant. I really enjoyed that. I'm super inspired now as well. Thank you very much.

Rob: 32:50

Helen, I am I'm not gonna be able to record for the next six months because I'm gonna be busy trying to write books. I

Helen: 32:56

know I know somebody can help you with that and get better.

Jenny: 32:58

Exactly. Exactly. I can.

Rob: 33:01

Well, thank you so much, Jenny.

Jenny: 33:02

No. It has been absolutely lovely. Thank you both very much indeed.

Rob: 33:05

It's great stuff. So, of course, listeners, we really do appreciate you. The numbers again always stagger me and Helen, beyond belief that people are actually in as solo waffling. And these kind of shows where we've had Jenny on the show are absolutely brilliant as well, and we do hope you're really enjoying these. You know where to find us at stationeryfreaks.com, and on there, you will find details of, obviously, the podcast and the newsletter, which accompanies every episode that's on Substack.

Rob: 33:33

And you can find us as well on Instagram at stationary freaks u k. Helen, anything else before we close out?

Helen: 33:40

No. No. Just to thank Jenny for, wasting half an hour of her precious time having a chat with us. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Jenny: 33:48

Lovely. Thank you very much for inviting me. Thank you so much, Jenny.

Rob: 33:52

Really, really good. Thank you. And with that, we'll close out and we shall speak to you in the next episode. Bye bye.

Helen: 33:58

Thank you. Bye.