GailRentsch's profile

Jefferson, NY. Love to travel. My favorite trips include: tracking Anasazi ruins in the four corners region of the US; visiting Hindu shrines in Kerala; exploring Ephesus without a tour guide; working with teachers and students at a primary school in Tanzania; and eating my way through much of Italy.

I think my life really began when I graduated from college and got a job in book publishing. I was hired by a woman who was a manager! and she introduced me to the nascent field of book publicity -- something that was then considered important enough for secretaries to handle. Well those of us who  started our careers in the field got to figure out how to promote books and ideas, and eventually book publicity grew in stature as the industry realized its (and our) value. And most of us in the forefront of the field were women. 

After 16 years of working for several major publishers with outstanding lists of authors, I was one of the first to go out on my own and establish a publishing publicity agency. Thanks to a wonderful staff, loyal clients and many referrals, the agency thrived and prospered over a period of 24 years. That was enough time, I decided -- with lots of trepidation -- to think about tackling something else. What that else would be, I didn't know but expected that I'd find out if I just gave myself some space to take deep breaths and allow my true interests to bubble up.

Thanks in large part to my involvement as a Founding Member of The Transition Network (TTN), what popped up for me was the desire to write a book that would explore how women over 50 are reinventing "retirement" and coming up with fresh ideas, attitudes and experiences. I proposed such a book to the two founders of TTN, and offered to create a book for the organization and share more than half of the royalties to it. The fabulous women in TTN  generously told me their stories, divulged their retirement strategies, and shared their missteps as they wrestled with how to invent new paths for themselves that they considered meaningful and satisfying. 

 

Smart Women Don't Retire, They Break Free: From Working Full-Time to Living Full-Time, published in June 2008 by Springboard Press, a division of Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books). Through this blog, I look forward to meeting many more women who are just beginning to think about or experience a transition leading them into new territory. My own transition has been a great journey and it's only beginning.

The Transition Network (www.thetransitionnetwork.org), dressage, animals, books, eating good food, entertaining, gardening, cross country skiing, movies, theater, pilates, weight training,

St. Margaret's Academy Arusha, Tanzania, The Transition Network

blues, soul, pop, opera, classical

lots of them, most recently Charlie Wilson's War

Shadow of the Sun, about recent history of Africa

Cairn terrier, Morgan horses, my quarter-horse mare, giraffes, tokapi,