Perfect for the beach bag

Published 6:00 am Wednesday, June 7, 2006

You know you’ve made it as an author when your name is larger than the title on the cover, preferably in embossed gold letters and a swoopy font. Bainbridge Island author Jill Barnett has had that distinction 13 times. On more than 5 million copies of her books sold worldwide.

Barnett writes historical and contemporary romantic fiction, with a large and loyal fan base of readers.

She has published 13 novels, many of which have made it onto the best seller lists of the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, Barnes and Noble and Waldenbooks.

But on her Web site Barnett relates that she was not one of those people who always considered themselves a writer.

“Oh, I was an avid reader, but writing? Well … that was something that never crossed my mind.”

The turning point came when she was asked to give a keynote speech on creativity, and realized that there was a writer inside of her, trying to get out.

“It took fifteen years of claiming I wasn’t born to be a writer to realize that I was. Inside of me is an innate need to explore things: things I don’t know; things I don’t understand; things I have to say to the world,” she writes.

It wasn’t long after that epiphany that a publisher agreed with her. She sold her first book in 1988 to a major publishing house, Simon and Schuster, based on 35 pages and an outline.

The central themes of her books are the themes that resonant with her largely female readers: family values, love and loss, forgiveness and redemption.

“Over the past 15 years I have been writing stories about human experience, fictional stories, some grounded in reality and history, and others grounded only in my imagination,” she said.

Her newest novel, “The Days of Summer,” published by Atria, is set along the California coast and features the wealthy Banning family and the not-so well-off Peyton family.

“Spanning 30 years and three generations of Peyton women and Banning men, ‘The Days of Summer’ is an epic drama that explores our deepest ties to family, the mistakes we make in the name of love, and is a reminder of our ability to hope, to forgive and to find the courage to change,” the publishers write.

Barnett grew up in Southern California and spent her summers on her grandparents’ farm in Texas, “far away from bestsellerdom.” She now lives on Bainbridge Island.

Barnett will read from and sign “The Days of Summer” locally twice: 6:30 p.m. June 9 at Liberty Bay Books, 18881-D Front St., Poulsbo, and 3 p.m. June 11 at Eagle Harbor Books, 157 Winslow Way E, Bainbridge Island.