Monthly Archives: June 2017

Pretty shoes, princesses, and granddaughters…

Sorting through posts from a now defunct blog, I came across this entry I’d written on February 10, 2013. I decided to share.

I resist the temptation to re-sock my granddaughter’s feet after she tugs off the knit footwear. It is amazing she kept them on all night and throughout breakfast. The fact we are in Kodiak, Alaska in winter, and it is snowy outside, makes no difference to her. After all it is warm in her house.

I try to convince her slippers are more comfortable than the pretty dress shoes she insists on wearing, yet I quickly realize my notion of comfort is not hers. When I arrived, she was wearing a red patent leather pair, each shoe adorned with a red ribbon rose. One of the gifts I brought her from Arizona was a glittery purple pair, which immediately became her new favorite. A couple of days ago her Grandma Marcie sent her pink patent leather shoes with bows. The pink ones are now her favorite. After all, they go with her tutu.

Did I mention she loves wearing a tutu? After she removes her socks mid-morning, off comes her pants.  Oh, she leaves on her underpants, but any leggings or outer pants are removed. If given a choice of what to wear in the morning, chances are she will ask for a dress. Yet, she feels a tutu is a suitable alternative.

My granddaughter is just three months shy of her third birthday. As she clomps around the house in her pretty patent leather shoes – no socks – wearing a colorful clean knit top, a tattered pink tutu, with cartoon Disney underwear peeking out from beneath the ragged netting fabric, she tells me she is a princess, and I believe her.

Our granddaughter has quite the fascination for princesses. I suspect she has every Disney book and movie pertaining to princesses. She has the Disney princess figurine collection and the larger dolls. She can tell you which one is Belle, Ariel, Beauty, Jasmine and a few others I am not familiar with. She can spend hours chattering away with her princess dolls, speaking for them as she creates her own imaginary world of make believe.

I suppose there was a time in the 70s I might have been horrified at the thought of my granddaughter having such a fascination with princesses. Yet, I am probably more a feminist today than I was 40 years ago, and frankly, I see nothing wrong with her love of all things princesses.

As long as my daughter and son-in-law haven’t signed her up for Toddlers & Tiaras (something they would never do) I see nothing wrong with Addison’s princess phase. I learned over thirty years ago—when our son was a toddler—that young children simply like what they like.

I am not concerned our granddaughter will grow up believing the only way to find true happiness is by snaring Prince Charming. I suspect the examples set by her parents will have more impact on how she views life than a make-believe cartoon world.

More Haunting Danielle audiobooks!

It’s official! Tantor Media has purchased the rights to books 4, 5, and 6 in the Haunting Danielle series. For those following the story via audiobook format, you can expect the audiobooks to be released in upcoming months. As soon as I have specific release dates, I will let you know!

Can we talk about sex?

If you’ve read my Haunting Danielle series, you’ll know they’re G-rated. I like to say they’re books you can comfortably share with your teenage daughter or grandmother. Whatever Ian and Lily might be doing behind closed doors, I leave to the imagination of the readers.

But I also write books under the pen name Anna J. McIntyre, and they tend to be R-rated. Coulson’s Lessons is the first book I ever published under Anna J. McIntyre—yet it is actually the third book in the Coulson Family Saga (formally The Coulson Series.) How is that possible?

The Coulson Family Saga includes five books. I first wrote Lessons over twenty years ago. At the time, I never intended to write a saga, that came later, after my characters came to life for me, and I wanted to go back in time and explore their history.

My mother has always said Lessons (now Coulson’s Lessons) is her favorite book of mine. She has read it at least a half a dozen times. But she read it the other night—it had been a couple years since she last read it—and she told me she needed to stop telling people it’s her favorite.

After questioning her, I discovered it was still her favorite, but she had forgotten how much sex was in the book. Mom is 89 by the way. She claims it is still her favorite, but would prefer to keep it to herself. Umm…please don’t mention this blog post to her.

But she is correct, of all my books, Coulson’s Lessons is the heaviest on the sex. Recently I read a review from one of my Haunting Danielle readers who mentioned they enjoyed Coulson’s Lessons, but might have liked a little less sex.

It’s a valid point. If I were to write the same story now, it would probably be less explicit. However, I don’t believe any of the sex scenes were gratuitous. After all, the story is about a married woman who has an affair—and the lessons she learns and the choices she makes for her family. It is a story about a woman the world has on a pedestal as the perfect wife and mother, who has a secret she keeps for a decade—and it is only after the death of her husband does the world learn of her infidelity. So perhaps I wouldn’t tone it down, if I wrote it today.

The Coulson Family Saga touches on a myriad of topics—homosexuality, infidelity, loss, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, rape, family values, loyalty, marriage, forgiveness, and hope.

It wasn’t until I finished the last book in that series did I realize it was ultimately about the women—and how they persevered.

Many readers who read just Coulson’s Wife, the official first book of the series, find the bittersweet ending of Mary Ellen’s story unsatisfying. They want the happy ending.  I don’t think the ending is necessarily sad. Mary Ellen, in her own way—for her time—found contentment and fulfilment in her life.

But sometimes that true happy ending takes several generations. I believe it did for the people of Coulson.

(We have given Coulson Family Saga a facelift, with another round of editing, fresh covers, and it’s now available in a book bundle for one price. The books in this series are also in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program, so if you are a member, you can read for free.)