Welcome to my blog!

First, a few disclaimers and warnings and public service announcements.

I am an expert in very few things.  You want to know about how to ask for the salt in Klingon?  Done.  You need to know how to hand stitch a hem?  No problem.  Need to make the perfect meatloaf?  I got you covered. I can also file nails pretty well and I’ve read volumes on dog breeds and I’ve had dozens of them pee on my floors (dogs, not the books).  These topics are about the limit of my proficiency.

However, I have a bottomless cavern of judgements, opinions, gripes, pet peeves, and things that just plain piss me off.  So, take most things in the bitchy way in which they are intended.  Also, I don’t have a G-rated vocabulary, and I don’t have a lot of patience with mean, spiteful, or ignorant.  You’ve been warned.

I spent a lot of time trying to decide what my first rant would be, but I thought it prudent to maybe ease new people in before I give my opinion on the Starbucks ordering regimen and men who drive big pickup trucks on the freeway.  Therefore, let’s talk books and writing.

I read Jane Eyre when I was ten years old.  Fell in lifetime love with Mr. Rochester, and the rest in history.  Romance is and has always been where I go to hide, to find love, comfort, happiness, and spine tingles.  I’ve read thousands of books, but if I could see the spreadsheet, I would wager that at least 70% of it is romantic in some way.

Anne Mather, Penny Jordan, Kathleen Woodiwiss, Nora Roberts, Colleen Hoover, all things Jane Austen…the list goes on.  I don’t remember when I started thinking I might want to write, as well.  I unexpectedly won a creative writing competition when I was 16, and my creative writing teacher said I had a gift.  No one had ever said that to me.  Life and circumstance pulled me forward and I forgot those words.

Then Facebook happened and I met a stunning person named Cristin Harber.  She encouraged me and gave me a shot to fulfill that dream.  For better or worse, I took her opportunity and now here we are, on my website, with pictures of books that have my name on them.  Surreal in the extreme.

When I sat down in front of that blank screen for the first time with only my brain to guide what I would write that timeless adage played front and center – write what you know.  So was born the Faithful Series.  In the pages of these books is my grandmother and my Aunt Grace and my grand kids and people I have known all my life.  I wanted the stories to be love letters to the south, and all the good things there that get lost in the bad.  I wanted to write about family and food and music and the beauty of the Appalachians.  I wanted to create characters with passion and humor and flaws and redemption.  I also wanted to write stories about forgiveness and survival and love.

On December 10, the last book in the Faithful Series will be released.  I will miss these people and this place so very much.  Through them the catharsis of so much has been made possible for my own psyche.  If you decide to read them, I hope that they will touch you, too.

Okay, enough touchy feely.  Like Kyle says, I’ll tongue kiss you later.

Feel free to leave comments, and if you are going to be testy, gird your loins.  I haven’t had coffee yet today.

Namaste,

Anna