Looking back, and ahead

Last week wasn’t a very good one. I learned my brother is quite ill, and it threw me for a loop. I think there’s nothing like those moments to bring life into perspective. What do the people you care for truly mean to you? How important are those squabbles, disagreements and differences of opinion? Not very, right?

It also makes me really think about what I want to be doing with my life at this stage. Life is capricious. How important is what I want to do? How much am I willing to give up to be able to do it? Is my quality of life what I want it to be? These are some serious questions and can’t be properly considered when emotions are too high. Those are the times I go a little nuts and make decisions that turn out to be not in everyone’s best interests.

I'm also seriously missing my critique partner Amy Ruttan, who's gone across country to a wedding. I so hope she's having a great time with her DH and kidlets, but I can't wait to have her back!

With everything that’s happening, I still have to find time to promo and get ready for the release of Fleeing Fate, which is just a week and a half away! I love this book, and hope everyone else will too. Storm god! Banshee! Shenanigans (which is one of my favorite words—ever)! What else could anyone want? Oh, hot sex too? Got yah covered baybee!

I also got around to creating an author page on Facebook. I’d love for you to stop by and give me a little “Like” love. You can find it here. I’ve also been on Twitter for a while, but I’m getting a little more active, so if you’d like to keep up with what I’m up to, my handle is @AnyaRwrites.

On Tuesday I have special guest Cynthia Sax stopping by to give us all a sneak peek of her Pricked release, Tattooed Tryst. This woman writes some hot, delicious aliens…I can’t wait to get my grubby little hands on that book when it’s released on July 18^th!

On Thursday we’ll be getting a look at an anthology featuring the amazing Cassandra Carr, Cristal Ryder and Jamie Davenport! I can tell you, it’s hot, hot, hot…

Hope you’ll join us all, and have a great week.

Slowly, I inch my way back in

My Dad is visiting from Florida and, although he's only been here for a couple of days I think he probably feels a little neglected! I've been working on some blog posts for the wonderful Long and Short Reviews' anniversary party this weekend, and retreated to seclusion to get them done. Poor Pops...I did offer him ice cream, though, the last time I went out to the living room. And he has the Hubster and our eldest for company. I'll make it up to him...promise!

Everyone's invited to the anniversary party, including me. Yeah!

You can find me at the Whipped Cream blog on July 30th, all day (until my daddy takes the T-bird away). Come by and comment on all the posts to be entered to win some great prizes--B&N Nook! WiFi Kindle! Gift cards! Exclamation points!

Wait, no. Those are freely available to anyone not afraid to look overenthusiastic.

Like me...

I'll have some random musings (with me, what else could you expect?) and excerpts from my books, as well as some teasers on upcoming releases.

Looking forward to seeing everyone there *throws confetti*

Full Circle

Life seems to like doubling back on itself.

My grandfather, Walter, would never turn back once he left a place, even if he'd forgotten something. He said it was bad luck. Thankfully, I resisted taking on that particular superstition, since I'm terribly forgetful at times, and I'd have to go out without my keys, or purse, or whatever, if I refused to turn back once I'd left home. I never knew Walter, but I sometimes wonder if he felt the same way about going back to times, issues and lessons learned in the past? Would Grandpa be horribly annoyed if he found himself having to go back once he'd moved on from a particular person, place or thing?

I'm thinking sometimes we need to go back--to revisit old situations, maybe even re-live them--because we didn't get the whole or right lesson the first time around.

Right now I'm watching someone I love go through something I experienced in my own life, and at first it was frustrating--like watching a really bad movie and knowing how it was going to end, because you've seen it before and really didn't want to have to sit through it again. Then I realized it didn't have to end the same way. That person is different. The people around him are different to the ones I had around me at the time. And even if it does pan out in a similar way, maybe he needs to learn, the way I did, just what life is capable of throwing at you.

I also think I never did learn the lesson I was supposed to learn, so I'm learning it now, along with him. I'll let him be my guide, rather than visa versa, since clearly I wouldn't be a very good one.

We'll make it. I have faith in him and, certainly, a great deal more faith in myself than I had before. Together, we'll get through it.

Out of the mouths...

I have to admit some of the conversations I have with my son could very well be classified as unconventional, and this one ranks right up there with the best of them. First, a little background...my son is fifteen, and quite mature in many respects. He's also a thinker, given to coming out with pronouncements so clear sighted I wonder why he isn't doing better than he is in school! I should also tell you I don't hide what it is I write from him, although he's (obviously) not allowed to read any of it.

So...I'm cruising the blogs and happen to mention to him the growing popularity with m/m romances, many of which are written by women, for women. He looks at me for a long moment, then shrugs. "I can see that," he says, to my surprise. "What do you mean?" I ask. "Well," he replies, "How different is that from all the girl-on-girl stuff men write?"

That blew me away, because honestly I'd never looked at it that way before. But he was right, and looking at it from that angle, it became logical and very understandable.

Then he grinned and added, "Of course, there is one major difference. The stuff you guys write probably has to have a plot."

After I finished laughing and picked myself up off the floor, I decided I wasn't going to make any inquiries into his obvious familiarity with porn...making a fuss would be, I think, rather hypocritical!

The Power of Theme

Strange the things we remember from childhood and teen years. People who can tell me where they were on a particular date back in 1982, or more embarrassingly, where I was, amaze me. I have very few solid memories of my younger life, not because it was particularly horrible or anything like that, but more likely because even then my head was in the clouds. So when a piece of poetry I had first read many years ago recently came to mind I was a little surprised a) that I remembered it and b) where I remembered it from.

My mother was a committed Mills & Boon/Harlequin reader and I would often raid her stash. As a quintessential pack-rat she was in possession of books from way back when. One day I picked up a Mills & Boon from some time back in the ‘60s. I hope the author, should she ever come across this post, will forgive me for neither remembering her name nor the title of the book (although I think it was My Old Love Came). I do, however, remember the story was based on a poem I somehow memorised but had to Google yesterday to find out the writer’s name!

I made another garden, yea,
For my new love;
I left the dead rose where it lay
And set the new above.
Why did the summer not begin?
Why did my heart not haste?
My old love came and walked therein,
And laid the garden waste.

A.W.E. O’Shaughnessy

Who knows why it popped back into my head after, oh, probably twenty-five years. What it did tell me however is how powerful a book’s theme can be. That Mills & Boon is long gone, but the theme, and the poem it’s based on, has lingered in my scatter-brained head all these years. That’s pretty impressive, especially in light of the fact the only other poem I think I can recite on request is Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll.

And for anyone wondering, the old love came, but the new (and true) love won out in the end!

BTW, Blogger wouldn't let me use the ampersand between 'Mills' and 'Boon' in the labels. Thought I'd mention it, in hopes no one will fuss me for not using the company's full legal name there!