Category: Stuff About Me

Twenty-Eight Years!

Our-Wedding

Why I Write Romance:

  • My husband is an alpha male.
  • I’m somewhere between a beta and and an alpha female. In other words, not a doormat, but of course very considerate.
  • That makes for lots of conflict, but not so much that we can’t work it out.
  • it also makes for lots of chemistry.
  • We met when I was eighteen, and I didn’t do a lot of dating beforehand. Writing romance gives me a chance to date other men! (Okay, they’re fictional).
  • Writing romance reminds me, over and over, what it feels like to fall in love.
  • I believe in happy endings. After all, I’ve lived one.

I didn’t crop this photo too closely, because I cherish the view of the inside of this church. We were one of the last couples married in this particular church. Several weeks after our wedding, a troubled teenager set fire to the altar, and the entire church burned to the ground. A little strip mall now stands in its place. Because we’d moved to another town (the town that Destiny Falls in WHERE SHE BELONGS is based on) immediately following the wedding, we didn’t get a chance to visit the church where we were married ever again. Although, we rented many movies from the video store that opened up there afterward. 🙂

The fifth story in my romantic comedy short story series, LOVE & OTHER CALAMITIES (currently comprised of the first two stories, Deceiving Derek and Catching Claire), which I promise I will write in the next several months along with stories 3 and 4, features a couple on the verge of getting married. Guess what’s going to happen to their church?

Authors Are People Too Interview

The fabulous Lauren Royal recently interviewed me for her blog, and the post is live now. Her series of author interviews is called Authors Are People, Too, and I was allowed to talk about anything other than writing. Lauren asks great questions, so pop over and see my answers!

Here are the questions I answered:

– What are your interests outside of writing? (Pop over to see my answer!)

– If you could do something dangerous just once with no risk, what would you do? (Pop over to see my answer).

– If you had to give up chocolate or alcohol, which would you choose or why? This one was a no-brainer for me. See if you can guess which it is before you pop over (to see my answer).

– What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever collected? Oh, boy, that’s asking a lot! I’m pretty weird. Which you’ll find out (way more than you ever wanted to) if you pop over…

– What’s the worse job you’ve ever had? Hint: No, it wasn’t when I worked in a prison. You won’t find out unless you…

– What’s your guilty pleasure? Poppity-pop!

– Would you rather meet your great-great-grandparents or your great-great-grandchildren? Which would you choose? I know what I said…Pop!

– You just won $100,000, and you have to spend it all on yourself today. No saving, no gifts, no charity allowed. What are you going to buy?  (You try answering that) —> Pop on over! Here’s the link.

Thank you, Lauren, for asking such great questions.

And Now Television…

While I’m blabbing about my childhood influences, I might as well confess my childhood TV addictions. Because I think they also influenced my desire to become a writer. And my tendency to write humorous/comedy. Even when I’m writing emotional contemporary romance, I like my characters to possess healthy senses of humor. At least one of them, anyway. The other one can be serious. I’m flexible like that.

I tend to believe I’m one of those writers who was born a writer—or at least a reader. I learned to read early (aged 4, so family legend goes), and once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. Yes, we had TV, but for years we had one, maybe two channels. And neither of those channels was dedicated to children, let me tell you! (“Let me tell you!” is something my grandfather used to say all the time, so when I say it, I think of him, let me tell you). Oh, we had a couple of Canadian children’s television shows, like The Friendly Giant and Mr. Dress-Up. And we had The Walt Disney Show on Sunday nights. If we kids were good, we were allowed to watch The Ed Sullivan Show following Disney. And Ed had that little mouse who told jokes and made everyone laugh and feel good about themselves.

My father loved The Red Skelton Show. I watched and loved it, too. And so comedy seeped its way into my veins.

No one could top Red for me until The Carol Burnett Show happened along. I LOVED Carol Burnett. She was funny, too. Especially her pitiful Eunice character. Tragic and sad, yet, in the midst of all that dysfunction, laugh-out-loud funny. Suddenly, funny seemed so natural to me. When you’re shy as a child, humor is a great way to break out of your shell. Every once in a while I run across someone who tells me I was shy when they first met me. Usually, they just tell me I was weird.

Well, I was raised on Topo Gigio, Red Skelton, and Carol Burnett, with a healthy dose of Bugs Bunny and Grover from Sesame Street thrown in (I didn’t discover Grover until I was 15—long story involving a coveted color television set and my high school that year being on split shift and not starting until afternoon).

And people wonder why I’m a bit odd. Now you know.

Childhood Literary Influences

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE books are the earliest influence I can remember (other than Dr. Seuss) that made me want to become a writer. Well, Dr. Seuss didn’t make me want to be a writer so much as he made me want to learn to read. And I did learn to read as a preschooler, through the Dr. Seuss books. I didn’t go to Kindergarten (it didn’t exist in my little backwoods community and this was a few decades ago!), and, because I’m born in January, I was 6 and a half by the time I entered grade one. I would have been bored to tears if I hadn’t learned to read before grade one.

I most likely “taught myself” to read because my older sister, two grades ahead of me in school, would sit and read with my parents for her homework. I was a bit competitive, so was in there like a dirty shirt. If Big Sis was learning to read, then, by gum, I was learning to read, too!

So by the time I entered grade one, at six and a half, I was reading at a grade three level. Big Sis was in grade three. Makes sense.

My grade three teacher, Mrs. Brady, loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and read them to us every day. I fell in love with them, too. I must have read each book three times over the next couple of years. I identified with Laura because she had dark hair and had to wear pink all the time whereas her blonde sister got to wear blue. Yes, my mother was forever forcing me into pink. I was a tomboy (which is weird, because I have no athletic ability whatsoever…oh, yeah, I was competing with my brother, the only boy, for my father’s attention—that’s why I was a tomboy) (have I mentioned I’m a middle child?). As I said, I was a tomboy, and what tomboy wants to wear pink?

We also lived in a very tiny farming community that, to this day, doesn’t have a stop sign or a store of any kind. Laura came from a pioneering family, and as a child I felt pretty much that way about myself. Especially when a bear happened into the yard.

Did you know there’s a blog devoted to all things Laura Ingalls Wilder? Well, there is. It’s called Laura’s Little Houses. And it’s worth a visit.

My favorite Laura Ingalls Wilder book was ON THE BANKS OF PLUM CREEK. Do you have a favorite Laura book? Or a favorite author from your childhood? One who inspired your love of reading or led to dreams of becoming a writer?

My grade seven teacher loved Ray Bradbury and read Bradbury short stories to us nearly every day. Ray was fun. But Ray wasn’t Laura.

It’s Laura for me!

Five Years

Today is the fifth anniversary of my grandfather’s death. He lived to 106, so his memory has pretty much stuck like glue. Plus, he was pretty amazing (anecdotes and pictures about his life can be found on my Q&A page—scroll down to the second question). My grandmother, his wife, was amazing, too. She lived to nearly 89, dying at 88 a month short of her birthday while I was pregnant with Youngest Son. Her funeral was on Eldest Son’s 2nd birthday. Which means she died in 1990. Kind of hard to forget attending your grandmother’s funeral on your son’s birthday.

“Granny and Grampa” were an incredible couple. I grew up (1) down the road from them until I was 5; and then (2) next door to them until I left home. Grampa was pretty stubborn, so he needed a strong woman as his mate. And Clara E. Sigalet Procter was about as strong as they came. Not to mention beautiful. Here’s their wedding portrait:

They eloped in 1924 or 1925. And were married around 60 years. That I remember because they held a huge square dance for their anniversary, and as the evening ended Grampa joined the grandchildren in drinking out of the punchbowl.

I can’t remember what the E. in Granny’s middle name stood for. She hated the name, so rarely divulged it.

Grampa didn’t have a middle name. He was just William Procter, nicknamed Duke, son of William George Procter and Hannah Fry Procter of “Mable Lake” in B.C., Canada.

R.I.P. Grampa. R.I.P. “Granny Next Door.”

I still miss them both.