Jane Lotter knew she was dying. She watched the timer on her desk as she increased her word count on a 14-inch computer monitor; sheâd always been frugal. Her husband of 29 years, Bob Marts, recalls what a vision she was as she edited her manuscript in the closet space next to their bedroom, secondhand chic art and a string of pastel-colored lights on the white walls. Many nights he fell asleep in their bed, just 10 feet away, while her fingers tapped the keyboard. His memory of that lullaby is difficult to revisit.
âIt's easy to get emotional when you're just talking about a book,â Bob said. âBecause the book is, to us, a part of her life and a part of her death.â
When three years and three rounds of treatment didnât change the truth about her metastasized uterine cancer, Jane Lotter turned to fiction: the novel she worked on for a decade or so.
âItâs hard to know when she started the book,â he said. âShe was always writing.â
Greeting card jingles. A regular column in a local paper. Blurbs for real estate magazines. Articles for community distribution. Whatever it was, Jane found time to write while being a stay-at-home mom to her daughter, Tessa, and son, Riley. At the kitchen table in their home near Seattle she fed stories to her kids. She read the entire Harry Potter series aloud using different accents for each character. âShe made certain we could relate to Dickens and Twain and Shakespeare,â Tessa said. âAnd Ephron and Capra and Hitchcock; all those she considered so singularly excellent at the craft of storytelling.â
Later, when her kids were almost grown and gone, Janeâs cutting wit helped her write updates about her disease to members of her book club.
Shaping her own legacy
âShe wanted to keep writing. She wanted to have a late-life career as a novelist,â daughter Tessa said. âThat was something that became very important to her. She wanted to publish a book.â
Janeâs comedic novel, âThe Bette Davis Club,â is about a tipsy middle-aged leading lady named Margo and her madcap search for a runaway bride and a missing manuscript. It won first place in the mainstream novel category of the 2009 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest. But no one would publish it.
âEditors would look at it and say, âIt's really good. Work on it and send it back,ââ Bob said. âAnd then she ran out of time to do that. So she edited it herself.â
Family, friends and others helped Jane publish her book via Amazonâs self-publishing service, Kindle Direct Publishing, in what Tessa remembers was an all-out effort to achieve her motherâs dying wish. Jane had grown weak and required regular hospital visits to have liters of fluid removed from her abdomen. So, when the first copies of her book appeared, the triumph was a tender mercy.
âIt was so many people working together to help her achieve this thing,â Tessa said. âSo many people's success. So, it was such this celebration when this box of books arrived.â
Bob picked up the first proof of âThe Bette Davis Clubâ signed, âDear Bobby M. I wrote a book. I really did. Hereâs the PROOF. XOXO Jane Lotter (AKA your wife Jane).â Her self-published book was the height of the authorâs success in her lifetime.
âIt's easy to get emotional when you're just talking about a book. Because the book is, to us, a part of her life and a part of her death.â
âI think that's when she decided it was okay to leave,â Bob said. âShe accomplished her goal.â
On July 18, 2013, with assistance from Washington Stateâs Death with Dignity Act, Jane died at the age of 60.
âHer last day on Earth, she held a copy of the book she had written, reflecting on what she accomplished,â Tessa Marts said. âShe held her book, and she cried. And we all cried with her.â
The life of a book after death
Jane asked her husband to take their kids out for a nice dinner with any money the book might make. But after her self-penned obituary was published in The Seattle Times, the book bought more than a meal.
To Tessaâs astonishment, the obituary âwent viral.â Soon, national and international publications wrote about Janeâs life, death, and her clever farewell to the world. Responses from around the globe flooded Tessa Martsâ social media.
âThe first time I read the book, I remember just putting the manuscript down for a moment and saying, âI have uncovered something wonderful and magical,ââ said Danielle Marshall, editorial director of Lake Union Publishing, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. âI was almost too excited to finish it.â
Danielle worked with Bob and Tessa to comb through the pages and carefully edit Janeâs book. âThe Bette Davis Clubâ was re-released two years after Janeâs death and has sold more than 140,000 copies across print, digital, and audio.
âThis is an unbridled success story,â Danielle said. âI'd like to say that at Amazon Publishing we're really making writer's dreams come true. And we've had evidence of that many times, but rarely more powerful than this particular project.â
Sales from their motherâs book supported a year of budget travel for Riley and will pay a small portion of Tessaâs tuition at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art; Tessa inherited her motherâs curiosity. She wants to be an actor.
âWhen the book does earn a little bit of money it just feels like a little nudge from my mom,â Tessa said. âJust sort of saying hello, I did this thing, you know.â
Five years after his wifeâs death, positive reviews for âThe Bette Davis Clubâ are reassuring for Bob. He sifts through the contents of the large trunk that belonged to Jane; he hasnât opened it in years. There are photos and typewritten paragraphs on loose pages, a stack of her newspaper articles, and his wifeâs handwritten journals.
âThank God she wrote so much,â said Bob. âIâm finding new ways to love her.â
About Kindle Direct Publishing: Hundreds of thousands of independent authors have chosen to self-publish their books on Amazon.