Posts Tagged ‘creativity & inspiration’

The Soul of the Matter: Sunday, Sunday…Rest with me, won’t you?

Sunday, February 24th, 2013

Resting isn’t for the faint of heart. Resting with purpose, that is. Being lazy has its place, no doubt. But resting isn’t all we need, when rebuilding is the goal. Revitalizing. Renewing. Reconnecting with who and what we are beneath the work and the responsibilities and the demands on our emotional selves that drive us to the brink. These are the intricate, delicate bones of real rest.

renewal

Good times, bad times, all the time that we spend being and doing and saying what the world accepts we are… Our outward selves are important. But it’s the inner us that only we know how to feed, and it’s our own renewal that only we are responsible for in the end.

To others, we are the combination of everything they’ve seen and heard us do and say, and everything they’ve thought about that person they’ve watched perform for them. But unless we come with our own running narrative (too bad we can’t all live in a novel, right?) others don’t know what we really fee and need and aren’t getting, not unless we tell them. And who wants to be that needy girl, right?

So we muddle through–the kind of muddling that takes a lot of skill and deflection while we take care of our own stuff, on our own, so others won’t see so much of it that they’d get fed up with how demanding we could really be if we let our insecurities off their leash. That kind of muddling can be exhausting. (more…)

How We Write: When our soul is tired…

Friday, February 22nd, 2013

Ever panic, thinking you might never be able to do what you love again?

panic

Me? I love writing. It’s my job,  but also my passion; how I enter the world. And after a season of not feeling well enough to do much of it, I was on a roll in 2012. That is, until the great crash of early 2013.

Hello, my name is Anna. And I haven’t been able to write for over two weeks. Not even a blog post. Me–and I LOVE to blog. Three, sometimes four times a week,  blogging is my morning writing exercise.

It’s how I prime the creative pump. It’s the blood that flows first, engaging my creativity, helping me smile or think or dig a little deeper  until I’m ready to tackle my daily pages. But ever since I turned in the final developmental rewrites for Three Days on Mimosa Lane the first week in February…nada. The well wasn’t just dry–picture a bunch of two-by-fours nailed across the opening, daring me to rip through them and face the big, bad ugly lurking beyond.

But why? Have the two and a half weeks been about being lazy? Giving up? What about the month before that, when I barely had the energy to complete the TDOML developmental edits and didn’t blog in January, either?

You’ve heard of bone tired. I think I’ve stumbled across the state of being I’m going to call Soul Tired.

soul tired

Overwhelmed. That’s where we sometimes find ourselves, whether its about writing or family or friends or other commitments that we love but realize we can’t face. Not right now. Not with a smile on our faces and a I’m so glad to be here hug.

When you’re soul tired, you’re disconnected. Sometimes, you’re overwhelmed. But always, always, you’re looking at the world around you and realizing you no longer know or feel your place in it. (more…)

Thank you…

Wednesday, December 26th, 2012

My family and I wish you and yours a wonderful holiday week.

christmas vintage

And I wanted to say a special thank you to all who’ve supported Christmas on Mimosa Lane’s release. My first women’s fiction/contemporary romance hybrid was quite a risk to take. My emotional, angsty voice is something you dig, or you really REALLY don’t. Going with Montlake and their primarily digital plans for the book was a scary shift in publishing paths, too. But to all my readers and fans I wanted to say, OMG, your response to the book has been overwhelming. I couldn’t be more blown away.

COML Front 240x360

At the time of this blog post, COML has 69 Five Star reviews, is still the #1 Family Saga on Amazon, and has sold more than 40,000 copies in just two months!

What can I say, except that you guys ROCK!

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart for embracing this special book and the series I’ve been lucky enough to begin at Montlake. Now, I’m off to finish Book Two, aiming for a late Summer/early Fall release ;o)

Here’s to an exciting 2013!

Holidays and Healing: “Unable are the Loved to die…”

Tuesday, December 18th, 2012

“Unable are the Loved to die, for Love is Immortality…” ~~ Emily Dickinson

When you write a Christmas book about loss and grief and recovery…and love, you’re walking a tricky path full of obsticals and blind paths and possible pitfalls you can’t see coming.

It’s kind of like navigating the holidays while you’re missing loved ones or dealing with the emptiness that’s left behind when someone who should still be here is gone from your life for good. Except that the holidays are all about hope and healing and believing in a better tomorrow, regardless of what’s troubling you today, so I guess that’s why I tackled such deep and personal subject matter and characters in my first ever holiday story.

hope etching bird

It’s too easy to focus on only the loss of someone.

It’s too easy to ignore it entirely.

What’s harder is remembering and loving and wanting them here still, once they’re gone, and believing that what’s best about them is still with us.

It can be nearly impossible this time of year to feel hopeful that a lost love’s future in our lives is still possible. But it is. And if we give ourselves a chance to believe that, what a bright and ever-expanding future that can become.

ImmortalLove

The loved ones we’ve lost, no matter how painful their passing, are immortal. They’re forever  part of who they’re helping us to become.

We honor them by remembering and hoping during the holidays and beyond, even when some memories may at first be too painful to process. (more…)

Safety… What defines yours: hope or fear?

Monday, December 17th, 2012

Be honest, had been Mallory’s wise advise–a woman who hadn’t felt safe enough to be honest about who she really was with anyone in their community, no matter how much she clearly wanted to belong in their world.

Safety, he’d learned from both his job and the last six months as a single father, wasn’t something you waited to come to you. You had to make your own safety happen…

~~ Pete Lombard, Christmas on Mimosa Lane

It’s an interesting paradox–the interplay between what makes us feel safe and what challenges us to step outside our comfortable lives.

No one in this country is really feeling comfortable today, I wager, so it seems like the perfect time to tackle this reader guide question for Christmas on Mimosa Lane. Because this book ( all my books, really) is about feeling safe and feeling like you belong and finding the community and family and personal confidence you need to keep that feeling, no matter what happens.

feeling-safe

But here’s the thing. We are our own safety. How we see the world and the past and the danger we perceive and what’s really there, that’s a choice. We can be tied to what’s damaged in us, or we can focus on what we choose to become despite what’s broken. It’s entirely up to us. We can be afraid or we can be be fearless, regardless of any other variable, no matter how tragic.

Fearlessness isn’t stupidity or naivete, mind you. Pretending we don’t have a problem is another kind of fear. In fact, it’s the worst kind. It’s how we’re guaranteed never to move forward. So that’s another choice we make to say we only deserve the brokenness that scares us.

We are the only change we can control.

we are our own safety

Not the outcome. Not the threats. Not the determined evil that will find us if it truly wants to, no matter how hard we fight or how much we prepare. But what we chose to make our future about–the next minute, day, week, year, decade of our lives–that’s our victory or our failure. It’s all that we are, a series of determined realities, a perspective that says we either hope or we fear.

Hope or fear?

Which will control you?

Which do you suppose ends up controlling my COML characters? ;o)

The Soul of the Matter: For love is immortality…

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

Unable are the Loved to die
For love is immortality…

                                       ~~Emily Dickinson

This is one of my favorite ED quotes. It’s one of the truths of this world and this season that will never pass. And, yes, it’s the emotional core of my first ever Christmas novel.

I hear from readers daily who love the deeper and darker elements of Mallory and Pete and Polly’s story. AND from readers who are railing that I would do something so realistic, when lighter and happier novels are what a lot of us think about reflecting a “holiday” spirit.

heart candycain

But what better message could there be to wrap a story around, than that those we love are always with us, even after their gone?And, at least for this writer, how should I show the reader a path to truly believing this truth, other than to begin with what this time of year can feel like if we’re still clinging to the loss of someone important in our lives, rather than the love that they will always bring to us whether or not we still have them physically?

Yes, Emily Dickinson wrote a lot about loss. Yes, I do, too.

 But I sense in her poetry, which I’ve been obsessed about since I was an intense little girl, her search for hope and healing and purpose–despite the difficulties of her life. I’ve been on that path myself since losing a good bit at a very young age.

So, when it came time to create images of little girls missing their mommies and husbands moving on from losing wives and grown women learning to trust and belong when their formative years were all about betrayal and being separate–you had to know I’d be painting with a brush that doesn’t gloss over reality on its rush to the happily ever after dream I want my characters to claim.

The title of this second book of my heart is Christmas on Mimosa Lane. And I’ve created the most beautiful Christmas morning I could have imagined.

heart holiday stencil art

However, that morning happens in the very last chapter and the very last scene of the book. (more…)

A review from a reader who shouldn’t have but found love…

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

I am not a fan of the Sad Christmas stories, but this one, for me, was exactly the right story at the right time in my life. I bought this thinking I needed a really happy, uplifting Christmas tale to make the realty of my life easier during this Christmas Season. Instead, I found that what I really needed was to cry, to see others were much worse off than I. This is definitely not the feel good happy Christmas that the majority of us think we are creating each holiday, but it is the one that most of us find at the end of all of our frenzied preparations. It is one unlike what most of us live.

This is a story of heartbreak, loss, desolation and still somehow in all of the loss there is this glimmer or hope and of the human spirit struggling to master everything negative in our world. Is also a story of tremendous love and the realty of what a life on the streets might be like for a child.

While it is not the usual Christmas fare, for some of us who are struggling with a loved one who no longer remembers us or any of the wonderful Christmas’s they created for their loved one’s; it is a story of triumph, love, hope and the memory of the times when things were better than they are now.

Read, Cry, Heal and Remember the GOOD TIMES…

I’ve already posted on the blog today, but I couldn’t help myself. THIS is why I write these stories.In case there’s any confusion in anyone’s mind why I do what I do with the family dramas and romances I write, this is the type of reader I write them for.

Yes, I demand a happy ending. But it’s the reality we begin with the the journey and the emotions I hope you all feel as you read that I’m mining for.

Thanks to the above reader for leaving such a frank and honest review. And for the 5 Stars, no matter how unexpected the story turned out to be, or how far away it was from the happy escape she began reading it for…

If this were your last Christmas, what would it be?

Tuesday, December 11th, 2012

I know. The blog title sounds grim, when in fact, it’s my challenge for us all. In my Christmas novel, a father and daughter are dealing with the first holiday season after losing their wife/mother–and the memories of the previous Christmas they hadn’t known would be their last. The result–make THIS holiday the home and family and cherished memories they’ve always longed for. Why put it off? Why not go for everything. No holding back. No saving for later. Revel and indulge and fight to the last breath for whatever good now can be…

santa fighting gloves

Several of Christmas on Mimosa Lane’s reader’s guide questions challenge you to think about what “good” and “happy” and “home” mean to you and your life and your holiday–so does the story and its characters. Many of the Emily Dickinson quotes I use are in-your-face reminders to see now far better than you do before or tomorrow. Life here. In this day. Make your home today what you want it to be. Make your life a struggle not simply to overcome a past failure or achieve future goal, but to be present for yourself and others in ways that guarantee that this moment is the best it possibly can me.

If this were your last Christmas, and you knew that now, what wouldn’t you do to make this year’s the very best ever? Would you let anyone stand in your way, or any memory tarnish this holiday’s experience? Would you hold out for next year or the one after, shortchanging what now could mean to you and the ones you love? I don’t think so. Neither do the characters in my novel.

And, you see, I write redemptive Christmas stories is by showing flawed characters, like you and me, with a lot of hurdles to clear before they get their happy ever after. It’s not until the middle of COML that we see the story turn toward a positive, potentially, ending. And even then, Mallory and Pete and Polly must fight to the very end, or they’ll lose what they want most. Just as we all do. Even Santa. (more…)

Publishing Isn’t for Sissies…When the work and creative and “other” sides collide

Sunday, December 9th, 2012

Samantha Perry was all dressed up with someplace to go. Yet it was closer to midnight than dawn in her winter world. Amidst what wouldn’t be a flowering garden for several months, as if a July morning’s warmth surrounded her, she paced another lap around her community’s park.

The sun was due. It would soon be another January day like any other day in their northern suburb of Atlanta. Another harmless moment to get through. Nothing yawned more threatening than getting her sleepy family ready for their Mimosa Lane Monday. But on a scale from nervous to freaked out, Sam had been silently racing toward a meltdown the entire weekend.

Somewhere around three o’clock last night she’d risen from beside her still-sleeping husband, showered and dressed for the day and bundled into the heavy coat Georgia demanded from only a few months each year. Heading downstairs and through her cozy kitchen’s French doors, she’d escaped into the peace that being outside and alone brought her. She’d been night walking for hours.

Opening Draft
Sweet Summer Sunrise
Seasons of the Heart
Book Two

***

It’s a crazy work and personal weekend.

crazy work day

I won’t go into the details, except to say that opportunities are taking off all over the place, and so is the stress, and so is the upheaval in my “away from work” life. It’s usually like that. You never see the good or the bad stuff coming, and you never appreciate the calm until the storm’s upon you.

So, of course, I owe my publisher the second book in the series that’s taking off like no one expected, with it’s Christmas novel launch.And on top of my life being overwhelmed with back-to-back holidays AND promoting a book release that keeps (YAY!) going strong, I’m facing the rewriting of a 380 page rough draft that means so much to me–but isn’t at the point where I think it’ll mean anything to anyone else unless I recraft it over and over and over again, until it’s talking on it’s own.

Publishing isn’t for sissies, my friends.And it’s always about the next book. And the next. And these days, success in digital publishing about having an ongoing series with lots of backlist titles. The only way to do that is to keep writing forward and building into what readers are buying–and somehow maintaining the integrity of your work and stories and characters, so you keep pleasing the fans who are loving what you’ve already done. (more…)

USA Today Spotlight!

Friday, December 7th, 2012

I owe the blog a Publishing Isn’t for Sissies/How We Write update, but it’s a USA Today Spotlight morning. Back soon with more from the “work” side of this beautiful ride we call publishing. But for now, share my unexpected USA Today Happy Ever After Blog spotlight from Kathy Altman and Joyce Lamb!

The book was even more stirring than I imagined. The perfect houses on Mimosa Lane harbor more than their share of heartrending imperfections — the once tightly knit neighborhood is slowly unraveling. The characters and their struggles are all so real and relatable that I’m still worried about them.

With Mallory and Polly, DeStefano presents a wrenching and effective juxtaposition — the child laboring to cope with her mother’s death seeks salvation from the woman who can’t come to terms with her own loss. But Mallory ends up helping Polly more than she can ever anticipate, and in doing so helps herself. She gives the little girl a “safe place” to store her mother’s memories until the child is ready to reflect on them — which is a lovely parallel for the safety Mallory doesn’t yet realize she’s found on Mimosa Lane.

But there’s so much more than angst within these pages! The sexual tension between Mallory and Pete burns hot enough to melt the snow off of every roof in the neighborhood, and the humor tucked here and there is entertaining and timely…

Still the #1 Family Saga on Kindle, holiday priced for $1.99 .

COML Front 240x360