The Perfect Present!

by Anna Campbell

I LOVE getting presents!

Yeah, I guess that makes me really unusual.

But I also love buying people presents. I love matching up the perfect gift with the right person.

Recently I was in Brisbane, which counts as the big smoke for me now I've moved to the Sunshine Coast, and I had a stack of birthday presents to buy. I was happy as a pig in mud. And even if I do say so myself, I think I picked up some beautiful, completely apt gifts for my friends.

Friends, even if you don't agree, don't tell me!

As many of you know, this year also marked a significant birthday for me (oh, thirty is such a lovely age, snork!). I collected a swag of lovely presents including some beautiful bouquets. Actually for me, flowers are a perfect present. I always love them.

One of my absolute favorites is the subject of today's blog. Recently I had wonderful Bandita Anna Sugden and her delightful husband to stay at my place in Australia. I've had a Bandita drought this year because I didn't make it to America for RWA Nationals so it was such a thrill to host our English Bandita and feed her to the koalas at Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin's place) which isn't far away.

By the way, no koalas were harmed in the devouring of my English visitors!


Actually, given koalas are herbivores, no English visitors were harmed either. I only put that in for a bit of dramatic tension. And speaking of dramatic tension, how shocking is this picture of Anna and me fighting off a vicious, blood-sucking kangaroo in the jungles of south-east Queensland? Scary, huh? I bet you have nightmares tonight!

Anna and Keith arrived bearing gifts, including one of the loveliest presents I've ever received. It's a commemorative teacup from Queen Victoria's 60th jubilee in 1897 - hey, how cool they did royal souvenirs back then! For a history geek like me, they couldn't have come up with anything nicer!

The teacup is really pretty - transfer printed with the British coat of arms of the lion and the unicorn and lovely roses, thistles and clover to symbolize England, Scotland and Ireland as the United Kingdom. Isn't it lovely?

Something that blows my mind is that this fragile piece of china is 114 years old and it's in perfect condition. I suspect it's been sitting in someone's granny's china cabinet as a treasured object since it was made.

Right now it lives in my bedroom and it never fails to make me smile. Think of how the world has changed since 1897 and yet this little piece of beauty is as fresh as the day it was made. That's one of the reasons I love old things - they give you such a window on the past.

Thank you, Anna Bandita and her lovely husband. You couldn't have come up with a better present! I hope you realized when you gave it to me quite how much I adored the cup and saucer.

So when was the last time someone gave you the perfect present? Or you gave someone else the perfect present?

Seeing we're in a gift-giving mood, I'm awarding one lucky commenter their choice from my backlist today. If you need help choosing a book, check out the books page on my website: http://annacampbell.info/books.html Good luck!

*********************

Don't forget we're kicking off Trick or Treat in the Lair with a BIG announcement on October 14, with a special treat to follow on Halloween. The Golden Rooster is poking into the corners to find out what's going on. He even asked Ermingarde the Dragon what was coming(from a safe distance, of course). But Ermingarde doesn't know, either.

Best-Laid Schemes Winners

Thank you so much to everyone who kept the blog going on Saturday when I was off having a wonderful time at the Brisbane Writers Festival!

Just to let you know I've swung by and answered all the comments - what fun to hear about all your best-laid schemes going oft agley!

The two winners of their choice of my backlist are:

MARYBELLE

SONALI

Congratulations, girls! Please email me on anna @ annacampbell.info (no spaces) and let me know which book you'd like. If you need help to choose, please check out my books page: http://annacampbell.info/books.html

Life In Hidden Pictures

by Caren Crane

I had a lovely daughter graduate from high school yesterday and it was one of those Significant Milestones that should be Caught On Film. I have a few pictures, most of which I am not in because I was taking the pictures, but I have some. They are now held hostage on my digital camera because I am too...let's not call it lazy, rather unwilling to take the time to upload all the pictures to my PC (although I did this one time, just to have a picture for this blog post!).

I have masses of picture prints from other Significant Milestones sitting in boxes in my dining room and guest room closet. (My husband would have consigned them to the attic and did not understand they would be ruined by being stored there!) I have no plans for these pictures, except to take them out from time to time and look at them or share them with others in the pictures. "Oh, look how cute they were then!"

I do not scrapbook (which I need to, because I'll forget this picture was Rachel's last day of school someday). I don't make cheesy photo collages to hang on the wall of the stairwell. There are no lines of framed school pictures from kindergarten through graduation on a mantle or wall or dresser in my home. I do have photos I have stuck in frames from time to time, more from shame and fear of being the Worst Mother Ever than any other motivation. I also have a very fragile and changeable collage of photos covering my fridge (ask anyone who has been to the house!) that spans the past couple of decades. I think there is even a baby picture of me up there!

I have great photos that I feel I should do something with, but I realize I probably won't. I may get them scanned one day - or I may give them to one of my kids to scan one day (seems much more likely). I don't want to lose them or be without them. I also would love for my kids to do what I still do at my mother's house: take down the boxes of photos and sift through them, remembering, laughing and smiling. Come to think of it, my mother never made scrapbooks or memory albums either. She tossed packets of photos in a drawer or box and still has them there. Maybe it's hereditary - or maybe, like me, she's just not a visually-oriented person. Then again, I've never thought she was the Worst Mom Ever, either. I am always thrilled to sift through and unearth the treasures that await me in her precious boxes.

So maybe I'll upload my photos to a memory stick and take them to Walgreens and have those Significant Milestones turned into pieces of colored paper. Then I'll stick them in a box, put them in the closet, shut the door and let them age a bit. By the time they are pulled out, sifted through, smiled over, laughed at and remembered, they will be Treasured Memories. I may even be in a few of them!


Do you make memory albums or scrapbooks or do you toss the photos in a box or file or drawer? Any particularly wonderful photos from your own Significant Milestones you would like to tell us about?

Lugging the Luggage on a Lugger...

by Anna Campbell

..to a Desert Island!

When this post comes up into the light of the lair, I'll be heading for the end of my wonderful two-week cruise on the 'Pacific Dawn' (that's it on the left) to New Zealand.

I'm so excited about this. In return for giving a couple of talks about romance writing, I get a free cruise. How cool is that?

I've never been on a cruise before and I've always wanted to go to New Zealand. So all round, it's wonderful. I look forward to sharing lots of photos with you in next month's Bandita blog.

I even went wild and bought a digital camera for the trip. It takes me forever to adopt new technology - which may turn out to be the subject of a future blog. Perhaps called Lugging the Luddite!

I'll be stoked if I take a shot as pretty as the one of New Zealand's South Island on the right! Isn't that beautiful? Wow!

So needless to say, I'm in the throes of packing because I leave on Saturday (it's the 25th November here right now - Happy Thanksgiving!). So far, I have a huge number of Anna Campbell books for giveaways, and ten books from the TBR for me to read, and all my Christmas cards to write, and the work in progress which I'm hoping is going to get some attention in amongst all the excitement. And I need lots of the sort of clothes I wear at RWA conferences. Thank goodness, it's a boat and there's no excess luggage charges!

So as I started putting out all this stuff that I'm taking with me, I wondered what were the five things I'd take to a desert island. And I came up with:

1. Richard Armitage (hopefully he can build and hunt and light fires and do plumbing and foot massages!)

2. A year's worth of Smith's potato chips, especially barbecue flavor

3. Sunscreen

4. 50 cases of champagne (hmm, I'm starting to like the sound of this island!)

5. MOBY DICK. Because while Richard is off catching dinner, I might actually read it in the absence of other entertainment

OK, what five things would you take to a desert island?

Oh, and if you want the Banditas as company, we count as one item. Oh, man, perhaps I should take the Banditas and their cohorts instead of MOBY DICK. We'd have a WHALE of a time!

As this is my last post for the year, I'd like to wish you and yours a very happy Holiday Season.

Thank you so much for all your wonderful support during the year. And thank you to all my wonderful Bandita sisters. You and the Bandita buddies are definitely something I give thanks for, not just today which happens to be Thanksgiving, but every minute of the year.

See you all next year!

Oh, and now for the bad news - I'm not sure what email access I'll have on the ship so I'm not sure whether I'll be able to respond to comments.

But hey, guys, party on!

Happy Songs!

by Anna Campbell

This morning, I was wandering around the house trying to get enthused about doing some work. I had the TV on to one of those video channels on cable TV.

I heard this short electronic fanfare and suddenly Just Can't Get Enough by Depeche Mode was playing. My morning suddenly started to sparkle. It's such a happy song and it never fails to make me smile.

So I started to think of other songs that always make me smile. I thought, for the sake of brevity, I'd stick to the 80s. Partly because that's when I was as up with current popular music as I'm ever likely to be. Partly because I was of an age (early 20s) when the music around at the time really sticks with you!

Maybe also because a lot of '80s music is just happy anyway.

One of the songs that always makes me smile from that decade is Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper. Maybe because I was a girl and I wanted to have fun! I loved Cyndi Lauper - never really took to Madonna who was the other really big female star of the time. That song is such a buzz!

Actually girl singers back then had some great feel-good songs out then. Who can forget Katrina and the Waves' Walking on Sunshine? Or what about the Go-Gos and Our Lips Are Sealed? Walk Like an Egyptian will probably make a lot of lists but I got SOOOO sick of that one so I groan instead of smile these days when I hear it.

Other songs from the '80s that invariably lift my spirits include Ant Music by Adam and the Ants, Echo Beach by Martha and the Muffins ("My job is very boring, I'm an office clerk!") and probably my favorite of all, Tainted Love by Soft Cell. I'm not at all surprised that wonderful song was sampled recently for a number one single. But nothing beats this version. Marc Almond's aching falsetto is full of pain and anger but somehow that driving rhythm puts this song into feel-good territory.

And speaking of falsetto so high only dogs can hear it, what about Take on Me by A-Ha? Yet again, you hear that keyboard intro and your life starts playing in a major key! Because I was living in London and didn't have a TV when this was a hit, I didn't see the video until a couple of years ago. I still think it's really clever with the mixture of animation and real action.

Oh, and another song that inevitably makes me smile is Feargal Sharkey's A Good Heart. Not sure why, perhaps because I was traveling at the time and it brings back great memories, but it definitely falls into the making Anna feel good category.

So what are your feel-good songs? They don't have to be from the 80s! Let's dance our way through the day! Oh, and if you click on any of the songs, you get to see the groovy videos!

The Day The World Changed

posted by Aunty Cindy aka Loucinda McGary

A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation at my local RWA chapter. During the Q&A portion someone asked me when I received The Call. When I answered, "It was Friday, September 14, 2007 at 8:30 in the morning." several people were surprised I remembered the day and time so clearly.

How could I not? That was the day my world changed!

We've all experienced a day that changed our lives forever after, sometimes in a happy way and sometimes in a not so good way.

I'll bet we all remember what we were doing that terrible Tuesday, September 11th when we heard about the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And I think we all knew that our world would never be the same.

I was a child in grade school, but I still vividly remember playing on the school playground at lunch recess with my best friend Gail that Friday, November 22nd. A couple of kids who lived near the school and went home for lunch came running up to tell us, "The President was shot!" My friend and I didn't believe them, and ran over to the classrooms where my teacher Mrs. Steele and her teacher Mr. Priest were standing. We didn't need to ask if it was true, because as we ran up we saw that both our teachers were crying. That was the first time I'd ever seen a grown man cry and I've never forgotten it. That was also the day I first heard the word assassination used without a reference to Abraham Lincoln. We all got sent home from school early that day, and my parents told me our country would never be the same.

Thankfully, not all life changing events are tragic. I'll never forget that sunny Sunday afternoon on the first day of spring when I became a mom. My life was forever changed by having my son, and in spite of a few years around puberty when I doubted either of us would survive, it has been one of the best things to ever happen to me.

Sometimes you don't know you're in the midst of a life changing event until long after the fact.

Twenty years ago, I accompanied my friend Yvonne to a singles event. She was new to the area and didn't want to go to a bar to meet men. I went along so she wouldn't have to go alone. I'm thinking it was a Thursday night, but it could have been Wednesday. I do remember we had to go to work the next day. I remember sometime in the course of the evening, I talked to a very tall blond man and when Yvonne and I were headed for the door, he came up and gave me his phone number. A week later, I called him, just so Yvonne would stop pestering me! She thought he was nice and she thought I should call him.

Well, she was right! That was twenty years ago and the DH and I have been together ever since!

What about you? Do you have distinct memories of the day you experienced a significant change in your life? What's said in the Lair stays in the Lair so c'mon and SHARE with us!

The Tyranny of the Blank Page

by Anna Campbell

After Jo's beautiful post yesterday, I wasn't sure what I could follow it up with today. Anything after that would just seem banal.

Anyway, I thought I'd share with you something I've been thinking about a bit lately.
As a lot of you know, life chez Anna Campbell has been pretty exciting lately. It's awards season and to my delight and surprise, both UNTOUCHED and CLAIMING THE COURTESAN have appeared on several lists of the year's best. A great thrill, because it's based on reader votes, was being chosen as Best New Author of 2007 in the All About Romance Annual Reader Poll. Another great thrill because it's such a prestigious award was seeing CLAIMING THE COURTESAN nominated (along with my talented fellow Bandita Donna MacMeans's THE EDUCATION OF MRS. BRIMLEY) for Best First Historical Romance in the Romantic Times 2007 Reviewers Choice Awards. Michelle Buonfiglio at Lifetime TV chose CLAIMING THE COURTESAN not only as Debut of 2007 but also Book of the Year! Wow!

But as most romance writers, aspiring or published, will tell you - the one you really, REALLY want to final in is Romance Writers of America's RITA Awards. It was one of the dreams that kept me going through my years in the wilderness before I sold. The hope that one day I'd be able to say I was nominated for a RITA! You need such dreams when you're struggling against self-doubt and rejection and a world which keeps telling you to be sensible and give up trying to get what you want because it's impossible to achieve.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, this impossible dream came true. I received a phone call in the middle of the afternoon from megastar Lorraine Heath to let me know that BOTH my books had finaled in the Best Regency Historical Romance category. It took quite a while for the news to sink in! One of the loveliest things about that moment is Lorraine was among the first people to read CTC and she gave me a great quote which appeared on the cover. So there was a fantastic feeling of artistic balance about the whole occasion!

As you can imagine, I've been excited and happy and pleased and grateful and... You know the drill! I've had several riotous celebrations, including one with my local writer friends that I talk about here. And for a week or so there, the house was fragrant with the bunches of flowers wonderful wellwishers sent me.

But in between all this hoopla, my REAL life continues. And my real life is writing my fourth historical romance for Avon.

With all of this positive reinforcement, you'd think writing the next book would be a doddle, wouldn't you?

Well, the answer is a resounding...

NO!!!!!

The awards and the praise have been absolutely amazing and I'll always be grateful for the lovely things that have happened to me over the last few weeks. But the stark truth is that filling blank pages with my stories, finding out what I want to say and saying it as well as I possibly can, bringing characters who are alive in my head alive on paper, that never gets easier.

Which I've decided is a GOOD thing!

Well, I think it's a good thing...

There's something scary but unerringly honest about trying to tell the best story you can. I think the process makes you honest. It's just you and the writing, nothing else. It's ruthless, occasionally rewarding, often terrifying. But it keeps me grounded the way very few other things do. And each book turns out to be as big a challenge - or sometimes a bigger challenge - than the book before. Because each book presents its own world and its own problems and requires its own solutions that you only reach through painful effort and more ups and downs than your common or garden rollercoaster.

And at the end of all that anguish and hard graft, you hopefully get a book that you're proud to see on a shelf somewhere. And hopefully that other people will like and tell you that they like! So long live awards season!

What keeps you grounded through good and bad times? What makes it all worthwhile for you? Can we help you celebrate anything? You know we love a party in the lair!

Writers' Strike and Viewers' Withdrawal

by Jo Robertson

Am I the only person who’s terribly upset that the WGA strike hasn’t been resolved? I love television. I adore television. I watch far more of it than any one person should ever admit to.

But I no longer apologize for it.

You see, all those shows are fodder for my imagination as a writer. So it’s a business expense, right?

Currently, I’m disgruntled that the networks don’t validate the work of writers because, after all, where would the shows be without the brilliance of an Aaron Sorkin or Joss Whedon?

So in support of the brilliant WRITERS of television shows, I’m listing five of my favorite shows, based on the writing alone. If I based the list on the characters or the acting, the list might be different.

1. West Wing: I know. It’s now defunct and seriously went downhill after the amazingly smexy Jimmy Smits joined the team, but come all, no one can write snappy dialogue and non-sentimental emotion like Aaron Sorkin.

2. Seinfeld: Ah, the scintillation of the show about nothing! Who would’ve thought the ordinary and quaint meanderings of a bunch of friends could be so witty? Of course, this was a show that was definitely an acquired taste, and some people never got on the bandwagon.

3. Friends: No better comedy ever! Flat out. We always wanted to know who Rachael would end up with. Now this was a show that knew how not to jump the shark!

4. Rome: I’m sorry, but do you know how hard it is to write an historical show that has the epic quality of the old Biblical movies of the fifties and sixties and yet appeals to the modern viewer? One word for this show: yummy!

5. Sex and the City: Okay, this is my dirty little secret and certainly not a show I’d ever let my own children watch, but it’s so outrageously funny that I had to put it on the list.

Okay, readers, your turn. What are your top five favorite TV shows? It’s okay if you go back to I LOVE LUCY or RAWHIDE or even THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW! Let’s hear from you.