Anna's Blog

Birthdays

August 24th, 2010

My baby girl turns ONE this week! Ahhhh, how did that happen? She is doing so many new things like speaking (favorite words include ‘mama’, ‘hi’, and ‘no’), waving, coloring with crayons, and she is THIS close to taking her first steps. But ONE. That is also THIS close to not being a baby anymore. And Bella? She will be FOUR this fall. Look, here were my girls a year ago:

And now look at them:

Dear Bella and Vivi,

All future birthdays are hereby canceled, as I am not allowing you to get any older. I am sure you will agree that this is a better arrangement all around. Also, you are not allowed to go away to college.

Love,

Mama

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A Giveaway!

August 23rd, 2010

Wow, I can’t believe the release of Dark Moon (Sept 14) is now just right around the corner! I’ll have loads of news and announcements about it coming soon. But for now, here’s an announcement for a drawing of a copy of Dark Moon or Twilight of Avalon, your choice. This is over on Libri Touches, which is run by the INCREDIBLY sweet Shanra who has donated an unbelievable amount of her time to do beta reading for me this year. Thanks, Shanra! And stop by to enter the giveaway!

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A Funeral of the ‘I can’ts’

August 20th, 2010

I’m over at Writer Unboxed today, holding a public funeral for some of my writerly ‘I can’ts’, including “I can’t be a pantser’, ‘I can’t write in first person’, and ‘I can’t write a sex scene.’ Stop by!

In other news, I got the kids lunch today, then while Bella was eating her peanut butter and jelly and Vivi crawled around on the floor, I started making soup for dinner. (This in itself is mildly blog-worthy, considering how, um, infrequently cooking has happened in our house these last few weeks). Bella asked what I was doing, and I said, ‘Making soup for you to eat.’ Except that I forgot to specify that this was for her to eat tonight, as opposed to right then. So she replied with, “That’s horrible! I’ve just had lunch! Do you want me to get a tummy ache?”

Ah, my girl. She cracks me up.

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Writing and Mothering: Updated

August 7th, 2010

I’ve been meaning to update my ‘writing and mothering’ section for the last . . . um, year, now? Ever since Vivi was born, really. That I’m only just now finding the time tells you that yes, indeed, 2 kids is a whole ‘nother world. I’ll add this as an actual page to my site, but I thought it was worth posting here, as well: Writing and Mothering: Version 2.0

When I wrote the ‘writing and mothering’ section of this site, Bella was under two and an only child. Now she’s three and a half, and a big sister to Vivienne, who will be one at the end of the summer. Time for an update!

In some ways, writing with 2 small children home with me full-time is not so different from writing with just one. Schedules are good. Strict daily word count goals are good. A willingness to live in a house that gets vacuumed . . . oh, you don’t even want to KNOW how not-often I vacuum. But a willingness to accept that I just can’t do it all is still very, very good. And yet, reading over what I wrote nearly 2 years ago, I’d kind of like to go back in time and pat myself on the head as say, Oh, honey, if you think you are busy now . . .

I still have the best husband ever. In fact, he may actually now be BETTER than the best husband ever. There’s absolutely no way I’d be able to write the books I do without him partnering me in the child-raising as much as he does. I do still get up early–ideally before both kids. Although that’s kind of hit or miss these days, because the baby has this sixth sense of when I’m up and if I get up an hour early, she pops up, too. I do make sure to give each of my girls special mommy and me time every day. And I’m very strict with myself about getting in 1000 words every day, if it is at all possible. But with the two kids and the tiny nursing baby I’ve had all this year, plus the ‘business’ side of the job like answering e-mails to my publicist, giving interviews, etc. . . I’ve had to accept that sometimes 1000 words is just flat out not going to be possible. And that’s okay, as long as I’ve given it my best shot, I save the file and tell myself tomorrow is another day.

I guess the bottom line is that writing and mothering is always going to be a juggling act, a tricky balance to pull off. Does that help? My webmaster husband tells me that a fair number of people find my site through a google search for ‘writing and mothering’ or something like that. And I wish I had some sort of miracle strategy to offer that would make it easier. But maybe that’s the best I can offer–permission to find it hard. If you are a fellow writing mama, here is a big high five/hug/groan of sympathy for you, because what you’re trying to do is HARD, no doubt about it.

I read an interview with another writer who said, “I’d rather fail as a writer than as a wife and mother.” And of COURSE, I feel that way, too, don’t even have to think about it for a nanosecond. But here’s the thing–if I’m not writing at least a little bit I feel like I WILL fail as a wife and mother. My sweet girls need a mother who is happy and relaxed and fulfilled. How can I not write, when writing helps me so much to be the mother they deserve?

And it’s not forever. Ages and stages. That’s something else I tell myself often. I will always be able to write more books, but I will not always have a baby and a toddler in my life. They’re going to be grown before I know it, and I don’t want to wake up one day and realize that I missed it or didn’t enjoy it at all because I was always trying frantically to cram writing time in.

And at the end of the day, I’m still so, so incredibly lucky. I have my dream babies and my dream job and a husband who supports me 100%. Surely only a ridiculously demanding person could ask for time to go to the bathroom during the day on top of all that. (Just kidding. Sort of).

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a GIGANTIC contest!!

August 3rd, 2010

Therese Walsh, my blog sister over at Writer Unboxed, is holding the MOST amazing contest to celebrate the trade paperback release of her debut novel, The Last Will of Moira Leahy.

Fourty-nine authors–including me–are donating TWO copies of one of their books for a “My Sister and Me” contest on her facebook fan page. The idea being that if you’re one of the winners, you’ll have a copy of one of these books to keep and another copy to share–with a sister or a friend.

Isn’t that awesome? I’m offering 2 copies of Dark Moon of Avalon, so to enter for a chance to win them–and all the other amazing books being offered–stop by!

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Scenes from the Day

July 30th, 2010

We went to the zoo today. Vivi saw her first elephants and zebras and lions and orangutans moving right over our heads. She clapped her hands and laughed and shrieked with excitement.

We got home, and as I was getting the girls ready for bed, Bella got on her toy phone and started ‘a conversation with God.’ At one point I heard her say, “Fantastic, God, great idea!”

Then while I brushed Bella’s teeth, Vivi carefully crawled over and filled the (thankfully unused!) training potty full of her sister’s toys.

I hope I remember all these little details of life with these girls of mine years from now when they are grown. There’s just something so magical about spending each day with these precious little beings, watching them figure out the world.

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Life with this Guy

July 27th, 2010

So, I should have added a #11 to my 10-true-things about my husband post last month. But here we go, Number 11: he likes to ‘help’ me write my books.

The other day I was called away from the story I’m working on at the moment by one of the kids, so left my poor characters in mid scene. (My characters are EXTREMELY accustomed to this, so don’t feel too sorry for them or anything). An elderly, battle scarred warrior had just told my narrator, “We can’t go back.”

Now, obviously you’re missing just a bit here in terms of like the entire story, who these characters are, just what was going on in this scene, etc. But trust me, it is a MOMENT, right? A big, dramatic, slightly teary moment.

So, I was called away, and when I came back to my computer, the line read, “We can’t go back. But we could always send the penguins.”

Oh, he is so helpful, that husband of mine!

Though he did make me the utterly gorgeous cover for my coming-soon short story The Witch Queen’s Secret. Isn’t it amazing? I’ve got a description of the story up now, and will have the story itself there very very soon. I’m just waiting on word from my publishers about where exactly it’s going to live on Kindle and other e-reader sites. But it will DEFINITELY be available for free download here.

So yeah, guess I will keep my husband around. He makes really really cute babies, too.

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Notes from the Teething Trenches

July 13th, 2010

Eek, has it really been that long since last I blogged? My time has been a bit taken up lately by my poor little teething baby. Who is teething. And also–let’s be honest here–being kind of a baby about it all. Poor love. Although I’m happy to report that she is as sweet and adorable as ever:

But, I have updates! Firstly, my husband has added a–very preliminary–Dark Moon of Avalon page to get ready for the release in September. Isn’t the cover gorgeous? It’s a very different look, obviously, from the Twilight of Avalon cover, but I’m really happy with what my publishers chose.

And I’ll have more new material up very soon. My genius husband is working on an interactive map and genealogy of the Arthurian world to help keep track of the characters and kingdoms in the books. And–I’m SO excited about this one–I’ll be posting a freebie short story here very soon, too. It features a minor character from Twilight of Avalon, and will also be available for free on Kindle.

And today I’m over at the amazing Sarah Woodbury’s blog, talking about why I love the King Arthur legends. Stop by!

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10 True Things About My Father

June 20th, 2010

Happy Father’s Day to all the wonderful dads out there! Including, of course, my father-in-law and my sweet little girls’ daddy! But since I am a horrible daughter and got completely caught by surprise by Father’s Day being today, of all times (long story involving our thinking Father’s day was last weekend, finding out it was not, and then me kind of going, Oh, okay, scratch that off my list of things to worry about this week) I will devote this blog to telling you 10 true things about my own Dad.

1. When I was really, really small, like two and three years old, we had a nightly ritual called ‘Piggy Back Time’ wherein my dad would carry me piggy-back and dance all around the kitchen with me. We had our own special ‘Piggy Back Time’ song that went along with it, which mostly involved singing ‘Piggy Back Time’ over and over. I thought it was AWESOME.

2. When I was a bit older, like maybe 6, my dad and I had our own club, called the TMC, which was short for the Trick Mommy Club. We had our own theme song for that, too. And our own secret signals that meant we had to have a meeting. As far as I can remember, our club meetings mostly involved jumping out at my mom and shouting ‘Boo!’ and eating a lot of candy. I thought it was AWESOME.

3. He loves Robert Frost poems. I can remember him reciting Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and other Frost poems from memory to me as a bedtime story.

4. But my favorite bedtime stories that he read to me were Life With Father by Clarence Day and Sherlock Holmes stories. We must have read the entire cannon of Sherlock Holmes stories half a dozen times.

5. My dad is also a huge James Bond fan. When I was in grade school, my mother was in a singing group that met every Sunday night. I LOVED this, because it meant that on Sunday nights my dad and I would watch a James Bond movie. These were VHS tapes taped off of television, so edited for the more ‘adult’ content and to fit in the commercials. For YEARS I thought that James Bond movies simply made absolutely no sense because these abridged versions were all I’d ever seen. Anyway, my bedtime was theoretically like 8:30 or so, but I could always talk my dad into letting me stay up to finish the movie. We’d hear the garage door go up at 10:00, signaling that my mother was home, and I’d go streaking up the stairs and dive into bed before she could walk in the door.

6. He loves A E Houseman poems, too. When I was a senior in high school he talked me into doing my AP English term Paper on A E Houseman. We have a great picture which I wish I could find now of me at 17 in a ratty old bathrobe sitting with my dad and poring over ‘A Shropshire Lad’ a couple of days before the paper was due when I was in crunch-time mode.

7. I would never have started writing fiction if it hadn’t been for him. I wanted to write. But I was always afraid to, until I had to write a senior thesis during my last year of college and my dad essentially said, ‘You are writing a novel’, drove me to the computer store, bought me a laptop to write on, and then talked me through every step of the outlining process until I was too much in love with my story to do anything but write it.

8. At the book launch when Twilight of Avalon came out last year, I was 6-months-pregnant-and-crying-at-toilet-paper-commercials. I knew I’d never get through reading the prologue to my book out loud to an audience, so my dad stepped in and did it for me. He was amazing, too.

9. Even though I am a horrible daughter as per above and am essentially getting him a blog post today for Father’s Day, I am going to go out on a limb and guess that he would rather have this than my other option, which was to tell him that the set of nesting doll measuring cups from Anthropologie I got my mom for Mother’s Day were actually for both of them.

10. I am the luckiest EVER to have had him as a Dad for 31 years, now! Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!!

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10 True Things About Anna

June 10th, 2010

Nathan (a.k.a. Mr. Husband) here. Yesterday Anna told you ten facts about me to celebrate our tenth anniversary. I happen to know the password to her blog, so today I am hijacking it to share with you ten facts about her.

1. She works hard to tell stories.

   Being an author is a dream come true, but not an easy job.  Anna works hard, almost all the time when she is not doing something with our daughters.  Seven days per week, her goal is to write a thousand words or more in the morning and then to revise and do research in the afternoon.  When not working on her own books, she is reading others’ works trying to figure out what makes them good and how she can learn from them.  When she is doing other tasks, her subconscious is constantly working, and she often has to dash to her computer to jot down ideas.  She really loves to tell characters’ stories.  Deadlines are not necessary to motivate her.  She delivered her last book something like a year ahead of schedule.

   

2. She named my car.

   I was a somewhat serious person once long ago.  Of course I was silly as a kid, but I tried to tone that down in high school and college.  All that changed when I met Anna.  She mentioned yesterday that I bought a 1973 Dodge Dart before we were married.  When I first showed her the car, she asked me what its name was.  “Ummm, the Dart?”  “No, I mean its *name*.”  “Dodge Dart?”  Clearly I wasn’t getting it. She informed me that her mother and she had discussed it and thought that Buster was a good name since it was brown in color.  (Buster Brown was a comic strip character used in shoe advertisements, get it?)  So, I called my car Buster, reluctantly at first, and only around her at first.  Now I can discuss “exercising Buster” with my father, with a totally straight face, and we each know what the other means.

   Anyway, this sparked a rush to name all of our major belongings, especially when we were setting up house.  Most names were alliterative.  Dexter the Dehumidifier.  Vince the VCR.  Preston the Palm Tree.  Phil the Philodendron.  Lester the Laptop.  Visitors to our house must have thought (correctly) that we were nuts.  “Have you seen the keys?”  “I think I saw them on Vince.  No, wait.  Look by Lester.”

   This was fun until it came time to part with an object that we had been anthropomorphizing for years.  I tried to put a stop to it after Anna felt bad sending Dexter to Appliance Heaven.  We actually donated him to an appliance repair shop so that his parts and refrigerant might live on.  But, it continues.  Twilight of Avalon was written on Gus the G3 (a Macintosh that was roughly nine years old at the time).  I’m afraid I have to take credit for that one.

3. She is not very assertive.

   An example of this was her job as an editor/researcher for an amiable nonagenarian who hired her to help with a a screed about what the U.S. is doing wrong with its policies on currency.  His confusion due to his advanced age meant that the project went in circles with little real progress made.  Feeling increasingly bad about taking his money for this Sisyphean project, Anna resolved to call him up and quit.  After the phone conversation, Anna walked into my office and said “I’ve signed on indefinitely.”  Apparently immediately upon answering the phone and without waiting to hear why she was calling, the gentleman had launched into a speech about how grateful he was to have her help and how much finishing the project meant to him.  She was finally rescued from the project by her pregnancy with our first daughter.

   Her lack of assertiveness comes from her placing a higher priority on others’ happiness than on her own.  Do something unjust to a third party while she is around, and you’ll find out pretty quickly that she *can* be assertive on others’ behalf.

4. She was *this close* to becoming a serial killer.

   When she was a child, she saw a raw chicken packed in flexible plastic at a grocery store.  She was poking at a pool of its blood and various bits through the plastic and looked up at her mom to ask what it was.  Her mother explained that it was a dead chicken.  She looked thoughtful a moment, and her mother expected her to get upset about the chicken.  Instead she said “Can we buy a chicken and make it dead so I can play with its blood?”  She has since grown out of this.

5. She thinks for herself.

   She may not be assertive, or often think of herself, but she thinks for herself.  She was the first (and only) person of my age cohort that I ever heard claim not to like the Simpsons.  We all watched it in college.  You could literally walk through the dormitory from corner to corner and hear, unbroken, the dialog from the Simpsons because every room that had a TV had it tuned there, just like the Lawrence Welk Show in a nursing home.  The Simpsons was hilarious back then.  Something in each episode to entertain everyone at every level from a kid to a scientist.

   Well, Anna didn’t find it funny.  She was looking at it more deeply than most of us and thought that the focus was too much on laughing at and sometimes even celebrating faults in the characters.  She likes things that focus on developing character rather than laughing about a lack thereof.  It is just a trivial example of the many, many issues where the masses are going one way, but Anna, after careful thought, is going another.  She doesn’t often fall for the advertising agencies’ attempts to make her think she needs product X to be happy, or that Photoshopped model Y is the definition of beauty, or that bogus statistics W show Z to be true.  She caught one email scam that even I, Mr. Suspicion himself, didn’t.  She is usually right.  But I still like the early Simpsons.

6. She really wants you to say “none is,” not “none are.”

   In science and engineering, we usually select singular or plural by asking “Is the quantity exactly equal to one?”  If yes, use singular, otherwise use plural.  1 meter.  1.1 meters.  -10 meters.  0 meters.  My brain works analogously for other things, like number of people.  Jim is.  Jim and Jill are.  Jim and three-quarters of Tom are.  None are.

   I did this for two decades of my life, and nobody complained.  But then I married a writer.  Someone who knows that the origin of “none” is “not” + “one.”  You wouldn’t say “not one are,” right?  I may have the usage note in the dictionary and a thousand years of history on my side, but at our house, it is “none is.”  Got that?

7. She has my back.

   I would compare our marriage to a fortress defended by two soldiers.  When we shoot, it is outward at threats, not at each other.  Friendly fire incidents are rare.  She considers my happiness and hers to be not only of equal importance, but one and the same.  We are happy or sad as a unit.

   

8. She has super powers.

   As far as I know, she can’t leap over buildings, but she does have a couple uncanny powers.  The one I want to share is that, well, she closes things.  She is The Closer.  Post offices, museums, national monuments, libraries, nothing is safe when she is near.  Posted hours make no difference.  I first noticed this phenomenon during our first day trip together.  We set out with a number of possible tourist destinations, planning to go wherever whim dictated.  We first drove to Gillette Castle.  It was closed for repairs, but, no worries, we walked around the grounds for a bit and then set off again.  We decided to check out the USS Nautilus Museum.  We arrived to find it crawling with admirals who were there for a ceremony.  It was closed to the public for the day.  We set out eastward for Mystic Seaport, RI.  We got massively delayed in traffic and arrived just as it was….. closing.

    

   

   Gillette Castle not being open.

    

   

   USS Nautilus not being open either.

    

   We didn’t immediately realize that this effect emanated from Anna.  But careful observation over the years has shown that it is in fact Anna’s mere presence.  Even after our recent move to the DC area, she leaves a trail of closed businesses and institutions in her wake.  We often drive to neighboring counties to use their libraries, and she actually forced the closure of a particular library (at least 30 minutes away on a good day) three times in a row despite our having carefully researched its alleged hours of operation.  In fact President Obama considered using a visit by Anna to close down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.  *That* would have been interesting.

9. She’s a trouper.

   Anna was once asked by an interviewer what she considers her best personal quality.  Being too modest to answer, she asked me to field the question.  I immediately answered “patience.”    In almost every area of her life, she has had to show what to me is an amazing amount of patience.  From dealing with prolonged sicknesses to waiting for her slow poke husband to finally finish his schooling to the odyssey from aspiring to published author, she has waited patiently and day by day worked toward health, success and happiness.

   She lived for years on a diet that I could not have stomached for a week.  She wrote six novels, each time exhausting the roll of literary agencies in her genre.  Each time she had to reluctantly give up on an idea and a cast of characters that had become very dear to her, accept that one to two thousand hours of her work would never earn her anything but experience–and more importantly to her, never be widely shared with other booklovers. And then start over with a blank word processing document and a fresh tower of research books on a different era and locale.  She never hesitated to take that first step of each thousand mile journey, even after five destinations in a row were mirages.  She lived through a period when even her survival was in question, and now she is the happy mother of two flourishing girls who has a great publishing contract working with people she loves to share stories she loves with readers she loves.  She did it step by step, day by day, without shortcuts, without cheating, without losing heart.  I am indescribably happy for her.

10. Her husband is the luckiest guy ever.

    I really cannot relate to the punchlines of most “wife jokes.”

Thanks for ten great years, Love. I now return control of your blog to you.

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