Optics: A Novel About Women and Work and Midlife Muddles is Gail Reitenbach’s debut novel. In an earlier brief but successful career as an English professor, she taught and published academic articles about novels. Later, she edited novels and nonfiction books. Writing novels, she’s found, is both more difficult and more satisfying than her prior relationships with fictional narratives.
…fiction, she believes, can illuminate and enliven ideas in ways that reports, articles, and analyses cannot.
Since leaving academia, Gail has spent less time immersed in fiction and far more time reading and writing nonfiction, which she’s found intellectually and professionally fascinating. But fiction, she believes, can illuminate and enliven ideas in ways that reports, articles, and analyses cannot.
Despite knowing that genre fiction (romance, mystery, suspense, fantasy, and their siblings) has a bigger market than contemporary fiction, Gail is drawn to reading and writing novels with a realistic orientation. She writes stories that examine social and human challenges through the feelings and actions of relatable characters. In the language of publishing and book sellers, her novels are upscale contemporary fiction.
Over a career that has taken her from academia to business, Gail has written and edited everything from tweets to books. She’s been a marketing communications consultant, freelance writer and editor, and magazine editor. She’s won a few awards along the way but takes greater satisfaction in knowing that readers have found value and pleasure in the work she’s helped welcome into the world.
Gail grew up in Canada and has lived in the U.S. Midwest, East, West, and Southwest. She loves mountains above all other landscapes. When she’s not wrangling words, she clears her head by hiking or takes on an even bigger challenge: gardening near Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Looking for information about Gail’s professional writing, editing, and consulting services or her nonfiction publications? Please visit Right Hand Communications LLC.
