ABOUT THE AUTHOR
*[This is written in third-person to give the illusion that someone else is saying all these fascinating things about me.]
Jill Mitchell-Thein is a 50ish writer, lawyer, part-time mother/stepmother of up to seven kids, and overtime wife of a retired Naval officer. She has an English degree and she’s not afraid to brag about it. She’s a dynamic but insecure Aries with a type-A-minus personality, first-child syndrome, bi-polar depression, and whatever the opposite of insomnia is. Besides reading and writing and eschewing ‘rithmetic, she enjoys power yoga, sophomoric cinema, good tequila, and cheap wine. She lives in the San Antonio area with her husband, any given number of their seven children (usually at least three of them), two dogs, six cats, four ferrets, a Burmese python, a hedgehog, an iguana, and several chickens. (Actually, she’s not big on animals and only tolerates her husband’s dogs: a passive-aggressive collie and a morbidly obese chihuahua.)
When she lived in Phoenix in 1996, while heavy-laden with child, she took a creative writing class at Glendale Community College and submitted some writings for the 1997 issue of their literary magazine, The Traveler. One story won second place that year, and was actually only somewhat better than the typo-riddled (apparently OCR’d) reprint of it that she found online. The college was also desperate enough for material that year that they printed some of her sentimental but weak poetry as well.
She never lets the truth get in the way of a good story. She once submitted seven stories to be considered for A Second Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul (1998). Six of them were true. They published the one that wasn’t (but don’t tell them or she’ll probably have to return the $300 they paid her for it). (Lucky Pennies, pg. 293.) Please don’t read it unless you are really craving something sappy and cheesy.
In 2001, she entered a short story contest for a local women’s magazine that she knew nothing about. She won third prize ($15) and had the opportunity to read the winning work (with much fanfare), to a packed tearoom full of militant lesbians.
The rest of her “published” writing appears on her now-extinct blog, exquisitedrivel, which was established in November of 2007 to quell the demand of teeming legions of her holiday newsletter fans. She knows, she knows…Everyone Has a Blog. But the vast majority really shouldn’t.
She wastes the rest of her keystrokes on nasty letters, legal memos, and court briefs in her work as an attorney representing veterans and their widows in their claims for VA benefits.
She balances her sometimes flippant or shallow observations with substantive and emotional musings. She understands that the best humor is rooted in truth and that laughter is best served after a bite or two of sadness. She loves that rare chuckles-at-a-funeral release. She believes writing that can take a reader from one emotional extreme to another, even within one sentence, is the most memorable. (She apologizes for the out-of-character use of the words musings, chuckles, and memorable as well as the lame serving suggestion. She blames her third person.)