LaMon, Jacqueline Jones

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LaMON, Jacqueline Jones

PERSONAL: Female; married Dana LaMon; children: four. Education: Attended Mount Holyoke College and University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.

ADDRESSES: Home—Southern California. Agent—c/o Authors' Mail, Ballantine/One World Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: Poet and author. Antelope Valley College, teacher; frequent writing workshop leader.

AWARDS, HONORS: Cave Canem fellowship.

WRITINGS:

In the Arms of One Who Loves Me, Ballantine/One World Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to various works, including Bum Rush the Page, edited by Tony Medina and Louis Reyes Rivera, Three Rivers Press; and Soul Food, edited by Eric V. Copage, Hyperion; and publications, including the Los Angeles Sentinal, Black Issues Book Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Rhapsody In Black, and Drumming between Us.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Two novels and a poetry collection.

SIDELIGHTS: Jacqueline Jones LaMon began her career as a poet, and her first serious inclination to write fiction began in 1999. In an interview for Nubian Chronicles, LaMon recalled that her first poem—written at the age of seven—was "about a girl's quest to 'find herself,' to find where she fit in the context of this world. This is a theme I also explore in my novel, In the Arms of One Who Loves Me."

In this novel, LaMon tracks the lives of two young, African-American professionals who seek personal and career satisfaction in New York in the early 1980s. Nia Benson, a college graduate, works as an administrative assistant with a film production company and aspires to start up a public relations firm. Her career is abruptly jeopardized, however, when she is fired and replaced by her boss' racist, incompetent niece, and at the same time, her boyfriend leaves her to marry another woman. Elsewhere, Seth Jackson, a musician who has not yet made it big, is unable to commit to his longtime girlfriend—who is also the niece of his business partner—Lauren.

Critic C. L. Jeffries wrote on the Romantic Fiction Web site that, in regard to LaMon's novel, "Unfortunately, the twisting, serpentine plot gradually degrades into a distasteful melodrama, disdaining its roots as a socially conscious, unconventional love story." Similarly, a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews concluded, "Choppy plot and multiple points of view, awkwardly handled." A contributor to Publishers Weekly, however, noted that LaMon "fares better when she focuses more on romance than rhetoric."

When asked by a Romantic Fiction Web site interviewer what process she used to write her novel, La-Mon explained that her first 200-page attempt developed by way of advice from other fiction authors who used no outlines. She left the novel at this point to attend summer school, and upon rereading it several months later, she deleted all but the first paragraph of her manuscript. "I realized that this approach was not working for me," she commented. Instead, she began to write a detailed, overall synopsis, as well as an outline for each chapter. "I eventually figured out that you have to do what is best for you as a writer! There is no right or wrong process, only the one that works best for you."

At the time of her interview, LaMon was working on two novels and a poetry collection.