FAIRHOPE, Ala. — When Janice Harayda, an award-winning journalist and author of several books, heard about the Writer in Residence program at the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, she soon knew the Eastern Shore would be an ideal place to finish her third novel. The Montclair, N.J. resident arrived a week ago to work on her humorous tale of empty nesters who pull up roots and branch out into the world of active adult living.

Harayda is the latest author to occupy the Wolff Writer’s Cottage on North School Street for three months, where she has a needed haven, secluded from the social and civic responsibilities of life in her hometown of 30,000. The respite will enable her to write with fewer distractions while she readies her latest book for publication.

“I was a journalist almost from the time I was in diapers,” Harayda said Thursday, revealing a smile that crept across her face.

Harayda graduated from the University of New Hampshire, where she edited the campus newspaper. There, she also studied writing with Pulitzer Prize-winner Donald Murray and National Book Award-winner Thomas Williams. She later taught as an adjunct at major universities.

Harayda was inspired to work in the fourth estate by her mother, a photojournalist; and her dad, a high school English teacher. She was a staff writer and editor at Glamour magazine early in her career, and also had a successful run as a writer and book critic for the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio.

Then she unexpectedly sold her first novel, “The Accidental Bride” (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000), a comic romance that scored well among her fellow critics and made her realize she had options.

“It was clear to me then that newspapers were an iffy career path,” Harayda said. “News holes were shrinking. I could see the stories were getting shorter, and I had more I wanted to say. I could see if I stayed in newspapers, I couldn’t tell the stories I wanted to write.”

Good reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly changed all that, and “The Accidental Bride” was picked up by the Doubleday Book Club, where it reached the hands of tens of thousands of readers in short order.

Harayda said, “That encouraged me to do another one.” She followed it up with “Manhattan on the Rocks” (Sourcebooks Landmark), a satire of New York manners featuring a character eerily similar to media diva Martha Stewart.

“My last novel came out in 2004,” she said. “One of the reasons I haven’t done one since then is both of my siblings died very violent deaths.”

One of her brothers was killed by a drunk driver, and the other committed suicide. The emotion she experienced after having already lost her parents made it difficult to write anything remotely amusing.

“I didn’t become blocked. I was always working and writing,” Harayda said. “It’s very hard to write comic novels when you’re dealing with real tragedy. It really takes you a while, even if you’re working every day. It takes a while.”

She used the downtime to establish the One-Minute Book Review, a popular online blog devoted to giving readers a concise guide to current literature. It is also the home of the annual Delete Key Awards, an almost tongue-in-cheek recognition she gives out in March to writers whose books are so bad, they really should have considered using their delete key more often. The site draws up to 2,000 hits each day.

Harayda said, “It became very successful very fast. It just keeps growing, and that’s perfectly OK with me.”

In fact, she enjoys having a way to connect with readers more often than book-writing makes possible. It typically takes a year to pen a novel and another for it to arrive on bookstore shelves.

“This is (my) first novel about my own generation,” Harayda said, referring to the book she’s writing while in Baldwin County. “It’s about a couple that moves to an active adult community, not a retirement community. The husband wanted to do it. It’s a comic novel about their adjustment to a new place.”

This stage of life transports the older couple from a big house in the suburbs to closer quarters where they’ll play pickleball, join clubs and socialize with others.

Harayda said, “There’s a lot of trauma for these kinds of people because their children want them to keep the house. They want you to preserve it as a museum of their childhood for perpetuity. They want their room to be kept as a shrine.”

She continued, saying, “It’s when leaving a house is more than leaving a house. You’re leaving a neighborhood. You’re leaving a way of life.”

The transition is not unlike Harayda’s temporary move to Fairhope. She said when taking such a leap of faith, you always leave your support system behind.

But, she made fast friends Wednesday night during a reception in her honor, and came to town already knowing at least one of the guests who attended.

It was while working at the Glamour offices in New York that Harayda met Judy Culbreth, a 1972 University of South Alabama graduate, who since returned home to serve as editor of Mobile Bay Monthly. Culbreth and her husband, Walter Kirkland, reside alongside Weeks Bay.

“We very quickly became friends, and stayed friends through all these years,” Harayda said. “She started telling me about this great cottage in Fairhope.”

Culbreth’s tip about the program bore fruit, and Harayda applied to FCWA, which accepted her with great delight.

Chairman Skip Jones said, “Our board got together and decided she’s somebody we’d like to have. From what I’ve seen, I think she’ll like working in our little spot.”

The small bungalow, named after former Page & Palette owner Betty Joe Wolff, is comfortably furnished and offers many sunny nooks from which to write. The home was renovated a few years ago by FCWA, and has since received additional touches by Anne Clinton Groom, wife of author Winston Groom (“Better Times Than These,” “Forrest Gump,” “Patriotic Fire”). Among them were curtains and monogrammed seat cushions. She also solicited donations of additional furniture.

Prior to the writer’s recent arrival, Mona Lester placed fresh flowers throughout the home, brought in magazines and stocked the fridge.

“I think they raised it to a higher level,” Harayda said. She is not opposed to roughing it though. As a child, her family owned a two-room vacation shack in the woods near the beach. It had no running water, but their outhouse was nearby.

She noted she won’t be holed up in the quiet cottage all the time, saying, “I am not so disciplined I will rope myself to my keyboard.”

Harayda plans to walk as many as three miles daily, and has done so since her arrival. She also hopes to find a church to attend here, participate in Mardi Gras, tour museums and visit the beach.

She will also be taking part in community presentations.

Jones said, “When we invite the writers, in exchange for coming here we ask they do three formal programs in the time. She’s excited about working with Ilse Krick (Fairhope Public Library director).”

Both Krick and Fairhope novelist and school counselor Suzanne Hudson are among those sitting on the FCWA board of directors. Jones said, “We work with (writers) on defining and scheduling what they’ll do. We haven’t yet decided what her community involvement will be. It sounds like she’s going to be good to do things with.”

“This is very unique in that you don’t have to teach to do this,” Harayda said. “Most (residency programs) are on college campuses and require you to teach a course. Teaching well is a big commitment and a big distraction. It almost defeats the purpose of the residency. Here, you don’t have heavy teaching or other responsibilities. You can come here and really finish a book.”

Perhaps the greatest advantage of being a FCWA writer in residence is in finding yourself surrounded by the sights the Alabama Gulf Coast has to offer. Harayda said, “There’s something inexplicable. Gore Vidal said the most important thing a writer can do is have a change of scenery. There’s something about changing your setting that makes you look at your novel afresh.”

Being near thousands of reference materials certainly doesn’t hurt either. She said, “Having the library next door is wonderful. People think that writing a novel is just thinking of it in your head and putting it on paper.” Research is very important, she pointed out.

Back home, Harayda is involved in numerous activities through her church, including working with the Hunger Action Task Force. She said, “I find that extremely rewarding. Food pantries are really hurting. Food pantries with the current recession haven’t been able to count on a steady flow. There are few celebrities that have signed on for this cause.”

Karen Spears Zacharias was the previous writer in residence at the Wolff Cottage. Harayda said, “(She) finished a book, and I have every expectation of doing so. After I get back (to Montclair), I definitely plan to talk about this on my blog and elsewhere.”

For more information about Janice Harayda, visit www.janiceharayda.com. To check out the One-Minute Book Review, visit www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com.