"PCSing...it's a Spouse thing!" now 25% off with publisher's discount!

Purchase PCSing...It's a Spouse Thing! at 15% off with coupon code RESOLUTION305. The book is currently reduced by 10% so that's a 25% savings off the full price!

Disclaimer: Use coupon code RESOLUTION305 at checkout and receive 15% off PCSing...It's a Spouse Thing!. Maximum savings with this promotion is $10. You can only use the code once per account, and you can't use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. This great offer ends on January 15, 2010 at 11:59 PM EST so try not to procrastinate!

While very unlikely we do reserve the right to change or revoke this offer at anytime, and of course we cannot offer this coupon where it is against the law to do so. Finally, Lulu incurs the cost of this discount, so it does not impact the Author's proceeds of the book. 

~ j

The First "Jenny" Book is HERE!!!

"Jenny" is on hiatus while we suffer through yet another PCS. Please feel free to browse the archives located on the main page of http://jennyspouse.com to get your weekly milspouse chuckle.

OR...You can order the very first "Jenny" book ever and get your milspouse chuckle whenever you want! Just in time for Christmas, the book is located at: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/pcsingits-a-spouse-thing/13835448

Selling for $19.95, it's the greatest gift you can get for any military spouse you know. She/He will see themselves among these 120 pages more than once.

Help yourself to a handful of books this holiday season. Don't leave anyone out! ~ j

This week's "Jenny" comic is UP!

This week's "Jenny" comic is UP!

"The Newness" from Chandra's Handbook. Enjoy!

Don't forget to go to the archives at jennyspouse.com and vote for your favorite Jenny Comics from 2009...

Fort Knox creator and USO team up for Military Kids

WASHINGTON, December 17, 2009

Fort Knox cartoonist Paul Jon has created five special pieces of line art for a USO coloring contest for kids. The art features the Fort Knox characters, Major Joe Knox, his wife, Jane, and their two boys, Donald and Wesley, as well as typical scenes of USO events for kids. The top entries will be featured on the USO's blog site throughout the week of December 27th.

The USO reported an immediate, record-breaking response, with more than 130 downloads of the art in the first two hours the contest was posted. You can read all about the contest on the USO's web site

Fort Knox Cartoonist Paul Jon is a military brat himself, and he approached the USO with an offer to help military families. The USO came up with this project to give children something fun to do for the holidays.

Paul Jon is the son of an Army colonel whose tours of duty included Fort Leavenworth, Fort Jackson and Fort Knox. In addition to his daily and Sunday Fort Knox duties, Paul Jon runs the creative services department of a software company, and his artwork has appeared in newspapers, magazines and online publications across the country. He earned his B.A. in journalism from the University of South Carolina. He is married and has two beautiful goldfish.

"Jenny" picks up two more papers!

Beginning November 13th, "Jenny" will appear in two more newspapers: the Eglin Flyer and the Hurlburt Patriot. The following write-up appeared in both editions on launch day:

By Kenneth Books, Managing Editor

Beginning in this issue, the Patriot will feature the comic strip,“Jenny, the Military Spouse.” Written and drawn by Air Force wife Julie Negron, the strip follows the day-to-day life of a young woman thrust into unfamiliar surroundings as the new wife of a young Air Force lieutenant fresh out of flight school. She finds herself having to adjust to new surroundings, new terminology, new ways of doing things and a new breed of people—airmen and their spouses.

The strip is often found in so me unsuspected places. Look closely at the refrigerators in the Lifetime TV show “Army Wives” and you’ll see “Jenny” hanging there.Negron started her comic while her husband was stationed on Okinawa. According to an interview published Oct. 7, 2007, in Stars & Stripes, “Negron, a self-taught illustrator, started her drawing career creating editorial cartoons for an Oregon newspaper when an opening suddenly came up. The previous cartoonist had just died.

“I read about it in the paper,” she said sheepishly. “And I went down the very next day.” She was hired the same day after a brief interview. She worked at the paper for a couple of years, drawing cartoons on assignment. When Negron moved, she drew cartoons for the base newspapers wherever her husband was stationed.

Inspiration for the strip comes from things that have actually happened to her as a military wife and from suggestions from readers. In addition to Jenny, the strip is populated by Cassie, a blonde, beautiful and somewhat bubbleheaded wife of a fighter pilot, Patty Lynn, the spouse club president with a near-psychic ability to obtain information before anyone else, Jenny’s husband, “DH,” a slightly nerdy and sometimes clueless foil.

According to Negron, Jenny will always and forever remain a new military spouse, childless, naive and often lonely for a husband whose service obligations frequently outweigh his marital ones. She’ll always be surprised by what she sees and what people say to her.

And she’ll be in the Patriot every week from now on.

Sounds good to me! ~ j

All About That Military Brat Comic Strip called Fort Knox

I've got an Army Brat friend who created a comic strip based on his childhood and - guess what? - it got picked up by a major syndicate! So now he finds himself scrambling to drum up readership to prove to his new bosses that they weren't wrong in taking him on.

Which they weren't.

After all, how many people out there are Military Brats? I'm gonna say KA-Zillions, including me. (In fact, I've never really known any other lifestyle other than military...born into it, married into it)

I'm pretty sure we Brats can relate to my friend's comic strip in more ways than we can relate to a lot of the strips out there that are currently in full-tilt boogey.

My friend is Paul Boscacci and his new toon is "Fort Knox". You can see a complete run-down of it here: http://www.postwritersgroup.com/comics/fortknox.htm

The Facebook page is here: http://www.facebook.com/pboscacci#/fortknoxcomic?ref=share

Right now, Paul's working on placing his strip in the Garden City, Kansas, area. Please participate in the poll being conducted by the GC Telegram: http://swktalk.com/comics/ Kick back for a while and read through all of the strips. Each one of them is in danger of elimination so make sure you vote to keep the ones you like. Personally, I'm going to vote to keep all of them. After all, what makes me laugh might not make someone else laugh and vice-versa. :-)

"Fort Knox" officially premiers on October 5th. Give it a shot and give it a chance. And, remember, enjoy comic strips every day or they'll go away!

~ j

New PCS, New Life, New Post

Hello! I've been away from my blog since May but it wasn't due to neglect. It was due to another PCS. We recently relocated to Robins AFB, Georgia, USA.

Life has been busy, as you might expect. Here's what's been going on at our house:

On June 1st, we put our house in Oklahoma up for sale and hit the road for a house hunting trip to Robins. My husband stayed at the base and I flew back to Oklahoma. He checked in at his squadron on the 15th and spent the next two weeks completing his in-processing while I spent the same two weeks packing out of our house.

Didn't I just "pack IN" six months ago while he was TDY? Seems like that's all I do lately.

So I got to Georgia on July 4th, celebrated my birthday on July 6th (Woo Hoo!), our furniture arrived on the 10th, and my husband had knee surgery on the 14th. For the next two weeks, he was on 'convalescence leave' and was in too much pain to help me unpack the house.

Meanwhile, a film crew from the Pentagon Channel's TV show, ReCon, came to our house to film a segment on how military cartooning has changed since the days of "Willie and Joe".

So, now that our first week in town was over, I had to catch up on "Jenny" comics...and the blogging continues to remain on hold.

I also attended a meeting with the Southeast Chapter of the NCS and, ever since, have been extremely motivated to get together a marketing packet full of new material. This means creating new material, however, so that keeps me even busier.

So...to make a long story short, I've been away from blogspot for over two months because my life has been really busy. I realize this simply repeats what I said in the beginning of this note but, this time, I added really for emphasis.

BTW...I do have a new essay written but I haven't typed it up, yet. I write all of my essays in long-hand. Helps me think better when I have the creative connection going on with my hand and pencil.

So that'll be posted soon.

I gotta get back to work. I emptied out about four boxes of office stuff and forgot that I don't have anywhere for all of it to go so now it's just laying all over the floor. It's not an attractive look plus a pile of stuff on the floor makes it hard to get to the kitchen for more coffee.

Have a nice Sunday.

~ j

Military Spouse Appreciation Day

Happy Military Spouse Appreciation Day!

This is YOUR day...NOT Mother's Day, NOT Father's Day, NOT my birthday......I mean, YOUR birthday...!

This is the day that your family should take a moment and truly understand what you've done for them during your active-duty military spouse's career.

For instance...

Did your a.d. spouse ever sit with restless and rowdy children for hours on end, waiting for medical clearance to that overseas base, wondering if you were going to be disqualified because your youngest had "something"?

Did your a.d. spouse ever wait on the porch all day for the packing crew that never showed? (...while the movers did?)

Did your a.d. spouse ever sell Pampered Chef or Party Lite products because they couldn't get a job because local employers don't HIRE military spouses?

Did your a.d. spouse quit every single job they ever had because they had to PCS (sometimes after only six months)?

Better yet...did your a.d. spouse ever put their career on hold for YOU?

?????!!!!!

Okay, maybe I'm getting a little out of control here but...one last question...

Did your active duty spouse ever watch the news and wonder if you were on it?










Celebrate yourself. Not only on May 8th but all year long.

Go to jennyspouse.com for this week's comic.

~ j

What's on YOUR mind, Facebook?

I love when Facebook wants to know what's on my mind. Is it really that interested in me? Apparently not because, when I told it the following, it wouldn't take it. ha.

Here goes...this is What's on My Mind right now:

Penny the Puppy wants me to Get Up! from the computer. There's a lake in our backyard from the storms last night and she's dragged in something gross. The vacuum cleaner is sitting in the middle of the livingroom, chillin'...'cause it knows it'll be awhile before I get in there. All of my websites, "friends", and other annoyances are updated... except my nemesis, The Archives at jennyspouse. (2009 is STILL not posted!)

The cat, Miss Kitty, is sitting right in the middle of the diningroom table, shedding, leaving pawprints, checking her manicure, and giving me the stink-eye.

The electricity went out last night and I need to go around the house resetting the clocks or I'll be late for work tomorrow. I have a bunch of writing to do but the house needs cleaning first or I won't be able to concentrate.

I think I bought the wrong gift for my mother-in-law yesterday for Mother's Day so I may have more shopping to do.

I need a bulletin board in here.

I slept wrong so now my knee is stiff.

How's that? (I think I'll deal with Miss Penny first and see what she wants...that should distract me from everything else I have to do today. She's real good at that.)

Hmmm...I wonder why Facebook wouldn't accept what was on my mind? :-)

Cheers! ~ j

PS...This week's "Jenny" is UP! "Living in TLF"



:-)

This week's "Jenny" is UP! "The Potty Routes"

This PCS has been very eye-opening for me.

For instance, while getting ready for bed in our fourth hotel of the trip, I realized I was subconsciously "mapping out" the route to the bathroom.

I was also memorizing where the furniture was. That didn't surprise me because my baby toes ALWAYS take the hit whenever I make a mistake.

Chandra is PCSing right now and I thought that she MUST be going through the same things, especially when her children need to go potty in the middle of the night.

Go to jennyspouse.com to get your weekly chuckle!

Have a laugh-filled week!

Cheers! ~ j

Army Wives Renews for 4th Season

Just a little news about Army Wives.  They've been renewed for a fourth season even before the third season has begun (June 2009).

Here's the link to the story:  http://www.tvguide.com/News/Army-Wives-renewal-1003295.aspx

~ j

Interview with Terri Barnes of "Spouse Calls"

Terri Barnes and I have been
e-mail buddies for a couple of years now. After I moved back to the states, she wanted me to get somewhat settled so she could interview me.

Great! I love her stuff! So, between her busy, busy schedule and my so-so schedule, we picked a day she'd call and...

I gave her the wrong phone number.

Because, as it turns out, when you PCS, you get about twenty-seven new numbers to memorize and the hardest one of all is your own phone number. Honestly, when do you really use that one?

Terri apparently had a nice chat with the lady who answered - so that's a good thing - but I'd screwed up our window of time and now we had to resort to an e-mail interview. I stayed up until 2 a.m. that night, making sure I answered her questions as fully and completely as possible. After all, I owed it to her to at least get this one thing right.

But I think you can tell I'm getting tired and a little bit loopy by the last few questions.

Luckily, the interview turned out really great. Terri posted the uncut, unedited version on her blog over at Spouse Calls.

I hope you enjoy it. (...and don't forget to head to jennyspouse.com for today's latest chuckle)

~ j

...and the winner is...

Here are the results of the voting process so far...

1. "Welcome Home Syndrome" - November 2, 2008 Episode 157

2. "Moving Day" - January 13, 2008 Episode 115

3. "The July 4th Episode" - June 29, 2008 Episode139

4. "The Difference Between Guys and Girls" - April 20, 2008 Episode 129

5. "Holiday Military Spouse" - December 30, 2007 Episode 113

6. "New Spouse Orientation" - January 27, 2008 Episode 117

Tied for 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th Place:

"Yoga Schmoga" - February 17, 2008 Episode 120

"Listening is Love" - April 27, 2008 Episode 30

"Support the Troops" - July 13, 2008 Episode 141

"Patty Lynn, Command Spouse" - August 31, 2008 Episode 148

The top five strips will run in the Stars & Stripes during February, excluding "Moving Day" which has already been published twice and needs a rest. :-)

~ jewls

What are your favorite "Jenny" comic strips from 2008?

It's time for the National Cartoonists Society to dole out their annual awards and "Jenny" is eligible for the first time!

You can help get "Jenny the Military Spouse" recognized by her peers this year in a big way: tell me your favorite strips from December 1, 2007, to December 31, 2008.

I need at least 6. (Go to the Archives)

"Jenny" comics will be considered in the Newspaper Comic Strips category. Past winners include Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), Scott Adams (Dilbert), Lynn Johnston (For Better or For Worse), and Rick Kirkman (Baby Blues), to name a few.

I'm not saying we can WIN anything (in fact, I don't even expect it) but we'll at least be included on the list of this years' contenders. It's exciting to think that this little comic strip about our lives as military spouses could be recognized on a national level.

Have fun reading back over the 2008 strips and send your votes to jewls@jennyspouse.com with the subject "Votes" before January 15, 2009.

Cheers!

~ j

"Jenny" photos from Army Wives, Season 2

I've finally received photos of the "Jenny" comics used on the set of Army Wives, Season 2.

A few locations where you can spot the strips are: on the refrigerator in the Holden House (Michael and Claudia Joy), in the Burton House (Joan and Roland), and on the wall by the desk in the ADAPC office.

Melissa Berent, the set decorator, sent me two from the Holden's fridge and three from the mock base newspaper. Here they are (click the images to make them larger):

The three comics shown in this photo are, from top t0 bottom: Episode 51, Officers' Wives' Bob, October 22 , 2006; Episode 4, Are We There Yet?, December 4, 2005; and Episode 37, It Needs to be Bigger, July 16, 2006.








This is the front of the fridge. The featured strip is Episode 31, New Spouse Orientation, June 4, 2006.

This episode was one of my favorite strips to draw because I channeled Dave Berg's (MAD Magazine) style.

It came out exactly as I'd planned.




At this point, I need to say that Melissa and her crew totally "get" the message I'm trying to convey through the "Jenny" comic strip.  Not only is it tough to be married to a military member but sometimes it's also hard to get along with the other spouses, cope with all of the traveling, the incessant rules of the military way of life, and so on and so on.

These few comics alone are perfect for instilling the "flavor" of military spousehood into the psyche of the actors on the set; it's a great way to use the strip. I commend the set decorators for their ability to climb inside our minds and "go there".

Here are the rest of the photos...

This newspaper (held by AW graphic designer, Paul, and created specially for Army Wives) was used in several episodes and was shown being read by different characters, including General Holden.



I haven't seen those episodes yet so give me a couple of days and I'll find them for you! :)

Here's the "above the fold" of said newspaper.








Here's their featured strip. Looks like it was on the outside so the cameras could see it. :)







That's all for now. If anyone has any other "Jenny-spotting" to report, let me know.

I spotted the strip on the Holden's fridge on Season 2, Episode 16, but totally missed spotting anyone reading the newspaper.

That's all I have for now. The next episode of AW airs in either June or July. They told me they'll be using "Jenny" more than ever during Season 3.

Get your DVRs ready!

Needless to say...Discussion to be Continued!

~ j

Two New Interviews

I've recently completed two new interviews.

One was via a stateside phone call from DC to Okinawa by Washington Times journalist, Karen Goff, and the other was a long sit-down chat at Chili's with Joelle, a journalist from the website, Okinawa Hai.

Joelle and I talked so much, and about so many things, that I sometimes forgot we were interviewing! haha

Make sure you check that site out...it's truly an informative and useful source for those of us living here on Okinawa.


Follow the links above or cut-n-paste these:

Washington Times - "Jenny's Mission of Mirth"
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/28/jennys-mission-of-mirth/

Okinawa Hai
http://www.okinawahai.com/my_weblog/2008/09/julie-n-works-t.html

Enjoy!

(All of this year's interviews are listed on my homepage at jennyspouse.com)

Army Wives to Use "Jenny" in Upcoming Episodes

"Army Wives", the t.v. show, will be using Jenny comics and Cafe Press products in some upcoming episodes. They'll be background props and probably won't be referenced as part of a scene but, if you're sharp, you can spot "Jenny" every now and then.

Let me know if you see her. I'll try to post screen shots as I get them. ~ j

Space-A Travel, Anyone?

I spent a long time traveling Space-A this summer. I was going to blog about it.

The blog ended up being almost as long as the trip (1.5 months) so I decided to direct you to Navy Wife Radio, instead.

We did a show about my travels on July 8, 2008. The link is:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/navywiferadio/2008/07/09/Navy-Wife-Radio

It's much easier to talk about it than to write about it. When I'm writing, I start going off into all of the minute details; that's a great way to lose readers. When I'm talking, however, people like Wendy can interrupt me and get me back on track! ;-)

Wendy and Jessica are going to try and do a more complete show on the subject of Space-A travel just as soon as they can get a knowledgable representative to come on the show and give us correct information. Keep checking Navy Wife Radio's website and radio show. They'll keep you updated

Enjoy the show and stay tuned!

~ jewls

Household Baggage Handlers book is here!

The book I've been illustrating is finally out!

Go to Marna's website (Householdbaggage.com) and buy one.

Just do it!

lol
jewls

Happy Cartoonist's Day!

Just a shout-out to my friends who cartoon. May all your writer's blocks and finger-cramps be washed away...at least for today.

The following is from http://richardspooralmanac.blogspot.com/

Happy Cartoonist Day! ~ jewls