Anna DeStefano's Blog

Three Days on Mimosa Lane is FINALLY live today! I can’t wait to share this amazing story with readers, where you get to see the three pivotal days of 2013 for our favorite returning characters on Mimosa Lane, and some very special new ones. It’s a spring story of redemption and renewal, it’s a summer story of freedom and courageously grasping your happily ever after, and it’s a Labor Day story about all that’s best about our country and how we keep fighting for family and our way of life and the love for each other that gets us through even the hardest of times.

It’s a love story about a family’s  journey, and finding their way through some of the rough stuff we all face,  and getting stronger, too, while they help each other get to that better place they find on their own.

It’s, hands down, one of my favorite novels I’ve ever written. And it was all full up with Robert Frost poetry that helped the book’s symbolism hits its mark even better…right up until I had to remove the quotes because of copyright concerns. But, BONUS, that doesn’t mean we can’t share the goodness out here on my blog.

“He knew a path that wanted walking; He knew a spring that wanted drinking;
a thought that wanted further thinking.”

~Robert Frost

Why, YES, now that you mention it, that’s why you see the beautiful, flower be-speckled path on Three Days‘ cover–a scene from Mimosa Lane’s park, where so many of our characters find themselves walking and trying to find their way back to the families and love they need so much.

Our characters have challenging paths to walk, and amazing happily ever afters to claim, and we’re lucky enough to be along for the ride.

Especially Sam and Brian Perry, whom we met in Christmas on Mimosa Lane. They came to the north-east Atlanta suburb they now call home over a decade a go, to start over. Except too much of what they need to deal with is still lurking beneath the surface, while they convince themselves they don’t have to. Of course, life has a way of making sure we deal with what we need to. Even if it has to kick us in the ass to wake us up.

And it’s the challenging journeys we often don’t want to take that bring us the most beautiful moments of our lives– (more…)

The Woods Are Lovely Dark and Deep ~Robert Frost

Nature drives us, when we revel in its mysteries. Earth, water and sky surround and inspire and guide and cloak. We build walls and roofs and pave over the dirt and install artificial climate and run electronic entertainment that drowns out a lot. But it’s there: the woods waiting for us to explore. The lovely, dark and deep surprises of living…

In between the distractions,  life insists that we focus. We’re so lucky that it does.

My life has insisted for the last couple of months. Attention had to be paid. I’m climbing back to the surface of all that’s “other.” Not the least of which because Three Days on Mimosa Lane launches next Tuesday, July 23rd.

In it, was supposed to be a collection of my favorite Robert Frost poems about the living that finds us when we least expect it. Hence the quote above, and the blogging I’ll be doing regularly again. Look for the Pinterest album that will collect them all as I chat about them. Come back and share what your favorites mean to you. I suspect I’m not the only RF fan out there.

The poems were removed from the final draft of the novel (one of the many surprises), because of copyright issues. But inspiration cannot be silenced. So let’s talk about the woods.

For me, they are full of wind and song and company, even when I’m there alone. Teaming with life and history and dreams and premonition, sometimes when I’m hiking interior to a waterfall or just a beautiful meadow someone’s told me about, I’m where I’ve always belonged, even though I’ve never been.

We don’t belong to the stress and the chaos and distractions of our every days. They are our days and we survive them, but they’re not our living. Our living is when we explore. (more…)