Jane V. Blanchard is the award-winning author of the “Woman on Her Way” series and a co-author of A Short Walk on a Long Trail: A couple's sauntering on the Vermont Long Trail.
Jane was born in Hartford, Connecticut. Upon graduation from college, she worked as a travel guide in Madrid, Spain, and cried at her first bullfight. In 1975, she and her husband Dennis lived in a tent in Winchendon, Massachusetts, for six months (until December) while they built a log cabin. After two years of living off-the-grid, they lived a self-sufficient lifestyle on a five-acre “gentleman’s” farm.
Before moving to Sarasota, Florida, she lived in Hampstead, New Hampshire for twenty-four years, where she raised two children, was a soccer and Odyssey of the Mind coach, and received the New Hampshire Excellence in Education Volunteer of the Year Award in 1996. She enjoyed hiking and biking and climbed twenty of the forty 4,000-foot mountains in New England.
In her fifties, Jane started mountain biking and racing. In 2002, she placed second in the Eastern Fat Tire Association Senior Division. “Even though I was not the fastest competitor, I did attend and complete the majority of that year’s races. Just like with the turtle and the hare, slow and consistent wins over fast but sporadic.”
In Sarasota, Jane became involve with several national and local organizations bent on helping women, and hosted a weekly radio show on WSLR, Woman Matters, for two-and-a-half years.
After retiring, Jane began hiking and bicycling ancient European routes or primitive wilderness trails and then writing about her adventures in the “Woman on Her Way” series. In her first book, “Women of the Way: Embracing the Camino,” Jane mingles her personal story with conversations she had with modern-day female pilgrims who also trekked the Camino. In “Hadrian’s Wall Path: Walking into History,” Jane shares her discoveries along the 84-mile path across northern England.
When she married in 1974, her husband Dennis and she joked about creating a lifetime of memories to chat about when sitting in their rockers in old age. Now in her mid-60s, Jane is still creating memories, experiencing life as fully as possible, and looking forward to a long future. “I have to live long enough to write about all my adventures,” she says.
In addition to having adventures, writing and publishing, Jane enjoys gardening, cooking, reading, and spending time with friends and family.
In her blog My Musings, now archived, Jane promoted writing as a business and blogged to help indie authors become successful. She started her writer’s blog, in 2011 to provide strategies and support for indie authors and to chronicle her journey into indie authoring. As with any venture, some paths were more difficult than others. Sometimes she got lost and had to restart. Sometimes she went in circles. As she navigated her way into writing and indie publication, Jane realized that to be successful she had to treat her writing career as a business and started applying the skills learned in getting her MBA. Since that realization, Jane promoted “authorpreneurship” (being an author-entrepreneur).
10 Little Known Facts about Jane V. Blanchard
She…
- …was a tour guide in Spain in 1972-1973
- …had a half-wolf-half German shepherd pet
- …lived without running water or electricity for two years
- …loves dark chocolate, especially with ginger and red wine
- …her favorite meal is grilled vegetables, but she is not vegetarian or vegan
- …she’s changed her clothes more than 100,000 times in her life
- …loves public speaking and has a ToastMasters Gold certificate
- …loves to sing, but sings off pitch
- …sat on a telephone pole at Mardi Gras in 1973 so her friend could find her, and she did
- …her friends never turn down an invitation for one of her meals