What was your first bird of the year? The first bird you saw outside on New Year’s Day. Mine was cardinal for the second year in a row, but 2022 it was a single scarlet male the only color in a winter landscape full of snow. This year the day was gray looking more like late November here than December. Three female cardinals fluttered around the bird feeders their soft brownish tan bodies with the tips of faint red at crest, wing and tail blending into the dead leaves and bare trees so that only their movement betrayed them. The first bird traditionally tells us what the coming year will be like, or what will be important to us. I have had January firsts where the birds all hid and I saw mammals, squirrels one year, and a cat one year. But it’s usually a bird, then you have to figure out what the message is for the year. Squirrels for me are to balance work and play better. Cat, was a sign to ask my allergist if I could have my first cat. That was a really wonderful moment after twenty years of allergy shots. Doves usually mean it’s going to be a year of matters of the heart, or issues associated with Goddess. Cardinals usually mean I need to be willing to be seen more, to stand out and say, look at me! It’s a lesson I struggle with like most writers, because on one hand we want our books to be wildly popular and sell tons, and make us tons of money to go with all those sales, but we are also usually introverts and shy, or at least more comfortable at our desks than doing interviews or public appearances. Even if we’re good at the public side it drains us. I was not happy with last year’s message of bright red cardinal, but female cardinal is a little less flashy. She does most of the egg sitting in the spring because her coloring lets her blend in and not attract predators while the male is the stalking horse saying, look at me and don’t look for our nest. Do I get to hunker down at home and nest this year? Cardinals don’t stop with laying eggs and raising chicks just once in the spring, unlike most song birds they will rinse and repeat two to three times a year. Here in Missouri where the weather stays mild longer I’ve seen them still feeding fledglings in early October. Though that’s a chancy month in the Midwest, because we can get a freak October snowfall. The year I noticed them feeding in October the weather stayed mild, luckily. They build a fresh nest for each set of eggs, probably because even the slowest predator might figure out where their nest is if they keep going to the same location to feed babies from March to October. Once they successful raise all their young then it’s time to form winter flocks with the juvenile birds who look just like mom. The males won’t get Dad’s bright red plumage until next spring, so the threesome I saw by the feeders on January 1st probably weren’t all females, but mom and chicks all camouflaged together to up the chances of this year’s babies surviving the winter without getting eaten by a hawk, or other predator. Maybe that’s my lesson for the coming year that I don’t have to be the brightest thing in view, but just concentrate on laying as many eggs (ideas) and raising as many chicks (books) as possibly this year. Be wildly productive and concentrate on writing new stories, and don’t put all my eggs in one nest, basket like the cardinal I’ll up my chances of success by having multiple nests for different broods (ideas/novels/stories) and concentrate on raising them until their ready to fly on their own and share with all of you.
Tag: Merry Gentry
Creative Emptiness
I’ve been running on empty so long, I don’t know how to refill my tank. Usually when I don’t write for even a few days my dreams turn to violent nightmares and my inner demons and ghosts drive me back to my computer to put it on the page. This time, my inner world is quiet. I feel more peaceful and relaxed than I have in years. I realize now that I never recovered creatively, mentally, emotionally, or even physically from researching and writing, Crimson Death which came out in 2016. I tried to write a Merry Gentry book afterwards, but hundreds of pages in, it fell apart. I thought, well maybe I’m not ready to write Merry yet, so I set it aside. It was the most pages accumulated on any book I’d written where I abondoned it in place. (I will get back to it, but with a different plot. Trust me the darkness of what I’d written – no, just no. Merry, Doyle, Frost, and the babies deserve better than that.) So, I turned to Anita, because she’s always written faster for me than Merry. I had and have dozens of Anita ideas, but even there it was slower than normal. I finally had to admit that I was drained, and that some books take longer recover periods than others, and Crimson Death was one of those. I think it didn’t help that the last Merry book, A Shiver of Light, had left me, and my fans feeling pretty traumatized, too. The Anita Blake novel, Dead Ice, was next written and published, but it, thankfully, wasn’t as hard on all of us. Crimson Death wasn’t traumatic in the same way as A Shiver of Light, but it was almost three times as long as a typical novel. That is a lot of pages to write in a deadline space meant for a book a third of its size. And as my usual I didn’t allow myself time to rest between books, though honestly if I’m to do two books a year, there is no time to rest between, even if I’m doing one book a year if its the page count of two books or more, then again, there’s no time to rest if I’m to meet my deadlines. Which leads me to why the book I just turned into New York will be out in 2018, so both my new editor and myself have more time. Time, the one thing that we cannot create more of, and the thing that so many of us give away the most freely. Its been so long since I had this kind of time to rest and regain myself between writing projects that I don’t know what to do. I don’t remember what I used to do to refill my creative tank. Right now my muse and I want to hibernate for awhile. I feel like I could sleep for days, and yet I’m already restless and fighting not to grow anxious.
I’m feel like a castaway that’s washed up on an island after fighting through a storm of waves and tides. I’m wanting to sit under the shade of the palm trees, but currently feel like I’m still crawling my way out of the surf and skinning my hands and knees on the sand and seashells, as I try not to be swept back out to sea. Eventually, I’ll have to swim back out and find my ship of words again. I’ll need to find my star and use it to steer towards a new horizon, a new story, a new novel, a new world perhaps, but for now I just want to find a place to rest and let myself be happy that I made it to shore.
2017 GONE WRITING, BOOK 2018
First things first, there will not be a big book from me this year. There probably won’t even be a little book from me in 2017, but my muse sometimes hits very suddenly so I don’t rule something smaller completely out. The next major book from me will be in June of 2018. Why am I taking this year off from publishing a book? Because my new editor and I decided we’d like the extra time.
My editor that I had worked with for twenty years, give or take, retired. Dead Ice was the last book that Susan and I worked on together. I was very happy for her to be able to retire early to all the wonderful plans she and her husband had made. I honestly didn’t think anything of it for my own writing process. I mean, I’d had six or seven different editors with the Meredith (Merry) Gentry series in as many books at Random House, and I’d done all right. One infamous Merry novel changed over three editors during the writing of it. I didn’t think the fact that I’d had only two editors in over twenty years at Penguin Putnam with the Anita Blake series might have impacted my writing process; the consistency, I mean. But it threw me more than I thought it would to lose an editor after that many years and that many books. I am hopefully settled in with my new editor, Cindy, for another long run.
Crimson Death was our first novel together and it was a nightmare. That wasn’t Cindy’s fault, at all. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, except my over ambitious nature. I should never, ever promise deadlines at the end of writing most novels, because at the end the muses are singing and writing usually spills forth like water from the proverbial cleft rock. Since I’m usually doing ten to twenty pages a day at that point I think that’s what I always do. I forget that at the beginning of a novel, sometimes I’m lucky to get four pages a day. It takes time to build up steam for the end of a novel, and I always forget that. Crimson Death was also the first Anita Blake novel set in a different country. I set it in Ireland, I’d read all these books, and looked at pictures . . . I don’t know, I thought that being in a different country that spoke English wouldn’t be that big a difference to my writing process. I was wrong. I was really wrong.
And then just before we left for Ireland our pug, Sasquatch, passed away. He was fourteen and we knew it was coming, but having to make that decision, holding him while he passed away in my arms – nothing prepares you for it. It’s always upsetting to lose a beloved pet, but Crimson Death was the first novel I wrote without a pug at my side in about twenty years, maybe longer. I know I had no pug when I wrote my first three novels, but other than that I’ve had at least one pug, or more, in the office with me. I started out joking that I don’t write as well without one, even with my other wonderful dogs, but as I write forward on the third novel I’ve attempted since Sasquatch passed, it’s beginning to feel more plausible.
If I could do it over again, I’d have done another Anita novel set here in the States where I was more familiar with everything and I’d have done my research at leisure. The trip to Ireland that suddenly became absolutely necessary was eye opening, exhilarating, and humbling. Nothing I had read prepared me for the Emerald Isle. I had researched the wrong questions. I had to let go of my preconceptions and the book became a very different book than the one I’d planned. Research, good research, will do that sometimes. The other problem was that this was finally Damian’s book. He’d been in the series since book six and this was book twenty-five. I had hundreds of pages done when Damian got loud in my head and said, “This is what you do to me? You make me a victim again?” He wanted to be the hero, or at least strong and not the perpetual victim the first version showed him to be, and I couldn’t argue with him, though I tried.
Ireland inspired me in a way that I didn’t anticipate. I was doing twenty pages a day in Dublin. I was hitting that end of book page count per day in the first third of the book. I thought, great, this is one of those books that writes fast! Um, no. What had happened accidentally is my muse and I had found the place we wanted to write the book, but it would still take months to complete it. I couldn’t stay in Ireland for months when I had planned on only staying for weeks. My life wasn’t that flexible. I had commitments in England both for my first ever European convention and for a research trip for a different novel. We left Ireland after less than a month and the moment we got to London I couldn’t write. I have no idea why, but I never write well in London and I’ve tried multiple times. The novel that had been going great guns in Ireland stopped dead once I left the country. If I get to the twenty pages per day point with a novel, wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, that is how I write that book. Change anything at that point from running out of the tea I’ve been drinking, the view, my chair, my desk, the computer I’m writing on or the software I’m using to write, my office pets, a lover having to travel – basically once the book is in the white, hot, heat phase, draw a circle of about fifty feet around me and everything within that circle has to remain the same or the book grinds to a halt.
I knew that about myself as a writer, but what I hadn’t anticipated was that a few days in Ireland would jump start the page count to that level of heat. Then we left the country for very good reasons and for wonderful adventures, but the book didn’t recover its speed for months. Then the other thing happened that couldn’t have been planned for, Crimson Death became the longest novel I’d ever written and I’ve written some long novels. Up to that point, I believe that Obsidian Butterfly was my longest. Interestingly it was set in a state that I’d never visited, New Mexico, so maybe its researching places I’ve never been that makes books super long for me?
The difference between the two books is that Obsidian Butterfly was pretty much the manuscript you got to read. Crimson Death I cut by a third, before it went to New York for final edits. I believe the rough draft was over 300,000 words which makes it well over a thousand pages. I have never written a draft that long. Again, maybe it’s the research, but whatever the cause, it meant that the first deadlines came and went, so we got new deadlines that could not be missed if the book was coming out on time. My first novel with my new editor became a series of emergencies. I wrote more than one day round the clock, literally. My husband, Jonathon, our girlfriend, Genevieve, and her husband Spike took turns bringing me endless cups of coffee, or just checking on me. Anyone who thinks they want to marry a bestselling writer, or a famous artist of any kind, should see that artist through a serious creative work before they say, I do. Artists, and I’m not any different, are moody bastards, and when the work isn’t going well it’s worse. I’m usually a nice person, but when the writing is going badly I roar like a dragon at any interruption. Genevieve and Spike hadn’t been living with us long, though we’d been dating them longer, so it was sort of a domestic trial by fire.
By the time the book went to its final rounds in New York, my two newest domestic partners begged me to write something else next time. They were full up listening to me talk about Anita and the gang. None of us wanted to go through another book like that. I think even my editor, Cindy, and all the wonderful people at Penguin Random House that helped make Crimson Death a reality were ready for a break. Yes, my two main publishers for the Merry Gentry series and the Anita Blake series are now one publisher. One of the largest mergers in publishing history.
I know that at the end of the process for that last novel I was drained. I felt like a seashell washed up on the beach, empty like a pretty piece of bone, caressed by the sea. So, in the end we all decided we needed more time for the next book to be written and edited. We didn’t want to go balls to the wall again. Cindy and I need time to understand each other as editor and writer. I need to let myself mourn twenty years of editorial partnership. I need to let myself mourn the loss of Sasquatch, and think about whether with three dogs, a cat, and a lizard, we can really add a pug at this time. I want to enjoy the first draft and not feel like every word has to be written in stone, because there isn’t time to revise without it becoming a publishing emergency. I need time to spend with my family, friends, and to take care of my body, mind, and spirit. My muse and I need to find our way back to a writing process that works smoothly. So that’s why there will be no new novel from me this year. See you in June 2018!
Ireland Here We Come!
Blog – Irish trip & research
I wrote this blog before we left for research, but security issues being what they are, I’m going to be posting some of the blogs out of order. It’s a shame a few bad apples spoil things, but there it is.
I’m sitting in my office, just after dawn. The sky is still all light and shining with the blue color only now fighting its way through all that LIGHT! The air feels cool and calm, the day stretching ahead full of promise and possibilities, and yet . . . but . . . There’s always an, and yet, or a but, or so it seems of late.
We are supposed to be getting on a plane for Ireland today, yes you read that right. We are headed to the Emerald Isle. We’ll see you all in London in August, but we’re leaving early for research. The book I’m currently working on is mostly set in Ireland, and because I’ve never, ever been there I’d put off this story for years. Wait, I kept telling it, and it waited. Don’t push, I said, and it didn’t push. Other ideas pushed hard and fast and paid no attention to my orders, or my requests, or even my pleading with them, because they were ready to be born, so I wrote them as they clamored to be written. Story ideas for me are like baby birds in a nest, the loudest voice and tallest held mouth gets the worm, and will fledge first, but unlike real life where the tiniest nestling can starve and die while it’s bolder siblings thrive, ideas don’t die for me. They live, they wait, and they bide their time.
This book has found it’s time. It’s eager, excited, demanding to be written, and the damn thing is set in Ireland. It’s set in a specific part of the country that I have never seen or even read about before the book decided it was set mostly there. I’ve only had this happen once before and that was with my book, Obsidian Butterfly. It is set in New Mexico, which I’d never visited. My character, Edward, insisted that he lived in New Mexico. In fact he insisted he lived somewhere between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, New Mexico. I argued with him. “You’re a fictional character. I made you up. You cannot possibly live in a place that I’ve never seen or even read about. You’re part of me, how can you go some place I’ve never been?”
When I stepped off the plane in New Mexico and saw those low, black mountains, that desolate, near alien landscape, I said, “Well, son of a bitch, you do live here.”
I have no idea how Edward, alias U. S. Marshal Ted Forrester, decided he lived in a place I’d never seen or read much about. He’s always been a character that went off on his own, and then would come back and tell me what he was doing, and some of what he had done. He keeps his secrets, even from me. Which is a very peculiar feeling for a writer, since I’m supposed to be making him up as I go, but somehow he has enough life of his own that he tells me what he’s doing, and surprises the hell out of me, a lot.
I should have known that Edward would be in a book that was insisting on being set in a part of the world I had never seen. I can’t say I haven’t read much about Ireland, because I have been a serious lover of this section of the world for a long time. I’ve read the myths and folklore of Ireland, Scotland, England, and though I know they are part of England now, Cornwall, Wales, and almost every part of these myth-ridden islands. I was a serious Anglophile in my teens and dreamed of visiting all of it someday, though I don’t think I ever believed I’d manage it. Traveling to such far off places was for other people, not for girls living in the middle of farm country, raised below poverty level, so it turned out. I knew we didn’t have money, but I never felt poor in the sense that the word, “poverty”, makes me think. I never felt impoverished, I just knew we didn’t have money. I’m not sure anyone I ever knew as a young child ever traveled out of the country for anything except military service.
I’ve been to England twice. I’ve seen Rome and Milan in Italy. I’ve been to Paris and found it as romantic as advertised, which I didn’t think possible. Admittedly, I was with Jonathon and almost anywhere I go with him is romantic. But we both really enjoyed Paris and look forward to going back and taking Genevieve and Spike with us. I could live for a few months in Rome, or Paris, but strangely didn’t enjoy London all that much. What captured me in England was the countryside. Glastonbury, Avebury, and all the Salisbury Plain area spoke to our heart.
The closest we came to Ireland on that trip was seeing it from the air. I remember thinking, wow, it’s so green. This time we get to see all that verdant green in person. I’m so excited, and a little intimidated. First by the flight, because I’m terrified of flying, and second, by trying to write about a country I’ve never seen before. There’s always a pressure to get it right on paper. I’ve already started making contacts with people I need to help me with researching the book I’m writing, the book you’ll read next summer, and research in England for a book after that. Though both of these books are Anita Blake books, I’ve also had Merry Gentry whispering around in my head, or rather other characters from her books. Merry is silent, content with her new babies and trying to find happiness after grief. But her world is moving around in my head as I look over the books on Ireland that I used for research in her stories. This trip might make the Merry fans get the next story sooner, might, I don’t know yet. All I know for certain is the two books I am absolutely researching while I travel across the pond.
London Here I Come!
My first signing in England will be August 7, at Forbidden Planet in London from 1700-1900. See you all there!
I will also be appearing at Nine Worlds on August 8 in London.
Saturday 8 August.
- 15.00- 16.00 – Kaaffeklatch
- 17.00-18.15 – “The dead will rise again” (Resurgence of Gothic Literature)
- 18.30 – 19.30 – Book signing
- 20:30-21.45 – “The F-Word in Fantasy” (Sex in Fantasy)
So for all you fans that have been asking, “When will you do a signing in Europe?” These events are for you, so come out and see me, because I’m finally here and I don’t know when I’ll be back.
Celebrating being #1 on the New York Times List!
The newest Anita Blake novel, Jason, is #1 on the New York Times List! Thanks to everyone that bought the book and showed how much they loved Jason the novel, and Jason the character! Thanks to all the booksellers virtual and brick and mortar!
When I sold my first story, my first husband took me out to a fancy dinner. When I sold my first novel, Nightseer, it was my Dungeons and Dragon group that surprised me with a party to celebrate.
When Guilty Pleasures, the first Anita Blake novel, sold, my writing group, The Alternate Historians, made me a cake shaped like it’s cover and we had a party.
When I hit the New York Times List for the first time I was alone on tour for A Kiss of Shadows. I thought I was being calm, cool, and collected until the room service waiter brought my hot tea. I had about an hour before I had to get ready for the signing that night, so I’d ordered tea to relax. I was so calm about the news that I accidentally gave the waiter a fifty dollar tip. I caught my mistake and fixed it explaining I’d just learned about the Times List, and then added, “If you came back with a fifty dollar tip they’d think you did more than just deliver tea.” He didn’t think I was funny. My media escort took me out later to a very nice restaurant with a view of the sea.
When I cracked the top five with Narcissus in Chains, my second husband, Jonathon, was on tour with me. It was our first tour together. In fact, it was the first time I’d brought anyone on tour with me. We used up the cell phone batteries in his phone, my phone, and our media escort’s phone calling his family and my writing group to tell them the news. We were in San Fransisco, because we went into China Town there and bought a necklace to commemorate the event.
When I made #2 for the first time with Cerulean Sins, I went to a wonderful local bakery and bought three to five cakes of flavors that they didn’t make cupcakes in, so we could finally taste them. We invited Jonathon’s parents and other friends over and had a cake tasting party. This was before I started exercising again, or watching my nutrition. Though honestly, I have a serious weakness for cake, not sweets, but cake is yummy.
I made #2 with A Lick of Frost for the Meredith Gentry series. There were other times that the Merry books hit the List, but I honestly don’t remember what I did to celebrate for each book. But there was only one Anita Blake novel, Incubus Dreams that hit #2 before Micah brought home the gold medal.
How did I celebrate that first #1 with Micah? Which, incidentally, was my last original paperback novel; like Jason, it was a shorter piece featuring the title character though it was a mystery complete with zombies and mob connections and background on Micah that even Anita didn’t know. Years before this I’d told my friend Joanie that if I ever made #1 I’d take her family and we’d all do a trip to Disney World. When I called to tell her the news, she reminded me of the promise and that’s what we did. Joanie, her husband Jim, and their daughter, Melissa went with Jonathon, our daughter Trinity, and me to Disney. Yep, that’s right, I celebrated my first New York Times #1 book by going to the Mouselands.
I can’t remember precisely what I did to celebrate my first hardback #1 Blood Noir. I know we did dinner somewhere nice, but after going to Disney World for Micah, it was just hard to top that, especially because I was deep into writing the next Meredith Gentry book, so there wasn’t time for a trip.
So how did I celebrate Jason hitting #1? I got the calls from my Agent, Merrilee, and then my editor, Susan, while I was changing for gym. I continued getting dressed, and when I got off the phone the first thing I did was tell Genevieve and Spike. This included much jumping up and down, hugs and kisses. Jonathon wasn’t at home. I debated on texting him, but waited until I could tell him in person, much kissing ensued. Then . . . then I went to gym. I had a great workout, came home, showered, and celebrated with my happy polyamorous foursome. My real life has become special enough that my normal plans are a celebration. Realizing that truth made Jason being #1 a very special milestone.
The flowers in the picture on this blog are from my U.S. publishing team at Penguin Random House, thanks guys!
New Blog – See you at FairieCon East!
So many of you ask me to come visit your part of the world, that I’m going to try and do more conventions and make more appearances. I will be a guest at FairieCon East November 7 – 9, 2014 in Hunt Valley, Maryland. I will be doing at least a signing a day, and panels! They’re opening up the big room for my spotlight panel which is a one on one conversation rather than a straight interview. I’m not exactly sure what that means either, but we’ll find out together.
The more of you that show up for my events at FairieCon East, the more likely I am to do more conventions and events on the east coast. I’m responding to two things; first that FairieCon has been asking me to be a guest for a few years now, and second, that so many east coast fans have consistently requested that I come back to their neck of the woods. So here’s your chance to see me in person, have me sign something for you, and give me more incentives to travel and meet all of you.
Choosing Character Names, part 1
One of the most common questions I’ve been asked is, “Where did I get the Celtic/Gaelic names for the Meredith (Merry) Gentry series? Especially the baby names for, A Shiver of Light?” Below find pictures of the primary books I used.
Another name question I’m getting is, “Why did I use Alastair for the baby boy, since that’s the name of the man who attacks Merry in the first book, A Kiss of Shadows?” Honestly, at first I forgot that I’d used the name before. I tend to have names that I like and I will reuse them, or variations of them multiple times if I’m not careful. Apparently, Bruce was a favorite for a bit male character in the Anita Blake novels for a few years. It seemed my answer to John Smith. I also seem inordinately fond of variations of the name Nicholas. When I realized Alastair was actually a villain name from earlier in the Merry Gentry series I changed the name for her baby boy, but she, and he, wouldn’t let me. Merry wasn’t traumatized by that long ago Alastair, or if she was she wanted to reclaim the name in a positive way. As for baby Alastair, he totally refused to be anything else. I originally spelled it, Alastar, as a double entendre for the star-shaped spot/birthmark on his back, but even that didn’t please this very opinionated new character. It had to be Alastair, and he wouldn’t let everyone call him, Star. That was my original idea that he’d actually go by his nickname to the point where you forgot Alastair/Alastar was his legal name, but Alastair doesn’t like nicknames. I’m a little worried about this brand new character as he seems determined to have his way. I think he’s going to eventually give me a run for my plot-money and totally take over a book, or series, someday. I can’t quite imagine writing books about Merry’s children all grown up, but there are hints that the babies already have ideas that I wasn’t aware of. *laughs*
New blog: We’re #2 & #5!
A Shiver of Light is #2 on the New York Times List combined fiction & e-books list! Yay!
A Shiver of Light is #2 on the New York Times List on the e-book list! Yay!
Apparently my fans buy a lot of e-books! Thanks everyone!
A Shiver of Light is #5 on the New York Times List of adult hardback fiction! Yay! Not so Yay!?
A Shiver of Light is the #7 best selling book in the country on USAToday list! Very yay! Thats fiction, nonfiction, children’s, young adult, old, new – books out the door regardless of when published. Example the book ahead of me on the list when I last checked was, Dr. Suess’s “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!” Apparently, there’s a preschool reading program that just started across the country featuring Dr. Suess’s wonderful books. It was fun for, A Shiver of Light, to be rubbing literary elbows with Dr. Suess. At the beginning of the school year you’ll have all the regular required reading books near the top of this list.
Am I upset that I didn’t get #1 on the Times List? Yes, I’m not even going to bother with all that, “It was an honor to be nominated crap . . .” Yes, it’s an honor to be duking it out at the top of the New York Times List, and I am happy to be on it and up so wonderfully high, but . . . if anyone on the List would really prefer not to be #1, I haven’t met them yet.
Congrats to Stephen King who is #1 this week! He maybe #1 on all the lists, but honestly I haven’t checked.
Is there a chance that I’ll rise higher next week?
Yes, but generally that’s not been my pattern.
How could I move up the list?
- If enough people got super excited and went out and bought even more copies of, A Shiver of Light, maybe I’d go up the List.
- If I could be involved in some juicy and major news worthy scandal in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, then maybe I’d hit higher on the List.
- If I was part of some major tragedy, I might move up the list.
But I see no scandals on the horizon, I have no desire to be involved in a tragedy, and most of the people who are are likely to be really really excited about A Shiver of Light, have already purchased their copy and have read the novel. At least once. Some of you are waiting for pay day, hardbacks are expensive, or having some major life event that is keeping you busy. (I’ve been reassured by a number of you that you will get my new book as soon as your life is not at sixes & sevens. Good luck and Godspeed!)
I’d planned on doing this blog Sunday, today, and only realized as I started to type that it’s Father’s Day. The first Father’s Day since Merry had her babies, so in her fictional world it’s the first one for the men in her life. I know her timing in months isn’t the same as ours, but I like the idea of her planning that first Father’s Day for all the new dads’ of her triplets. By the way, I did my research and it is possible for a woman to have multiple babies with different father’s in one pregnancy. All you need is to have sex with more than one man in the same night, and the woman to have multiple eggs waiting to be fertilized. Its even possible to have different genetic parentage of the same baby, though even the scientists aren’t entirely sure how that works, but Google Chimerism. Make sure it’s the genetic variety, not the fictional entries, because I’m apparently not the only writer to be fascinated by this real life topic.
Happy Father’s Day to all you real life Dads!
Our daughter, Trinity, is off on her post graduation trip, so it’s just Jonathon and myself to celebrate. I never had a father so the holiday was never that important to me. Actually it, like Mother’s Day, was just a reminder that all the other kids had parents and I didn’t. My grandmother would eventually allow me to get her cards and presents for the second holiday, but when I was very young she was adamant that she wasn’t my mother.
And below are some of the wonderful interviews that I did while I was on tour. I found some of the questions made, even me, think hard before answering – Enjoy!
This one is from, Searching for Superwoman.
Here’s Barnes & Noble interview with Paul Goat Allen.
Shiver of Light Event
Tonight I’m at Barnes & Noble at 55 Old Orchard Center, Skokie, IL 60077 at 6:30pm tonight. https://m.facebook.com/bnoldorchard
Some of the books I pre-signed today for the event. Signed some back stock, too!
