Living in the Moment

So I thought I should update everyone on my little Annie and send a thanks to all the lovely people who wrote me. Annie is doing well, all things considered. She's gained back eleven pounds and her energy level is great!!She still doesn't want to cuddle, which I miss terribly, but overall she's the best she's been in months so I can't complain. Well, not too loudly anyway :)

I've made her a bucket list, but I refuse to check anything off and I keep adding to it. I've posted some photos I took on our walk this afternoon. As you can see she was indulging in some of her favorite activities: stick chasing, stick killing, and puddle digging. The missing fur on her leg is where she had her surgery. She has a pretty big scar there now, but I told her it gave her " street cred" and no puppy will mess with her now!

The Thrill Begins Blog Interview

The wonderful Carla Buckley, author of Things That Keep us Here, interviewed me today for The Thrill Begins Debut Blog!

If you'd like to read the interview click here.

We had a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy it!

Australian Cover for STILL MISSING

I have to tell you, it's just the coolest thing to see another country's take on the cover design. I'm a lucky girl, because I love this one as much as I love the US one! Can't wait to see the others.

Book Trailer

Allen and Unwin, my Australian publishers, have created this awesome new book trailer for STILL MISSING! I love what they did with the cover. Very creepy! I can't wait to see all the different ones for each country.

Click here to watch the trailer!

( Isn't that background music freaky?)

Change

I do not embrace change. Those who know me, know this well. Although, I have made major changes in my life and taken some pretty big gambles, they required a lot of gearing up and stress on my part before anything happened. My husband, however, is a whole different kettle of fish. He loves change. He's stable in his roots (thank God or he probably would've changed me a while ago!), but household things he's all for mixing it up.

He also knows me very well.

He'll suggest changing the living room. I'll say, "It's been like that for years. I LOVE it like that. My life will be ruined and everything would be horrible if you moved it." Husband waits a few days, I'm out for a little while, then I come home and the living room is completely rearranged. I'm all, "WHY did you move the furniture? You didn't even talk to me about...Hey, that looks really good over there. Did we always have that lamp?" Within a couple of days I'm acting like I rearranged it myself.

Same goes with the exterior garden area. I swear every time I look out there he's moved something. And it always looks good. I never would've thought a patio table can be placed in so many arrangements. I barely had plants out there when I lived alone. Don't even get me started on his beard. He grows one. I complain, then love it. It's the best beard ever. Can't imagine him without it. Just when I've hit maximum loving stage he shaves it off. Chaos breaks out. Lots of, "Why! How could you!" rants and moans. Sulking, what have you. Then in a couple of days I'm saying, "Wow, your skin is so smooth. I think you look younger. Man, you're hot. " Then it grows back and I fall in love all over again.

And so we have our pattern and it generally works well. Except for one unfortunate incident where he decided to changed our Internet/Cable services without discussing it and I almost wrapped a cable around his neck. We both learned from that one. But I digress.

Then there was the air mattress situation. When Annie had her last surgery on her leg, I slept on an air mattress in the living room with her because she wasn't allowed upstairs and no way I was leaving my baby downstairs by herself. Husband was working out of town, so Annie and I had created a full on nest by the time he got home. I had a TV, close access to the fridge, my lap top, fuzzy blankets, a coffee table as a footrest/TV tray. Books, magazines, movies. It was great! After a few days I was completely immersed in " nest living." I even did all my final page proofs from the nest.

After a few days Annie wanted back up on the couches ( I built her stairs with cushions) but I was still happily ensconced on the air mattress. When husband came home on weekends, he also started to see the benefits and stole my nest for PlayStation usage. We also discovered watching movies was much cozier cuddled on a double air mattress.

Life was good.

Annie recovered from her surgery and was able to go upstairs, we were all back in bed. But the air mattress stayed in the living room. I started wondering how long it could go on? Could we just move it when we had guests? Everything was wonderful. But I knew, deep down, I knew. Change was in the air. It had been almost a month. Then it happened. I was upstairs writing and came downstairs to get a cup of tea. The air mattress was gone. The coffee table was back in place. The pillows all in their right spot on the couch.

I stared at husband, who was sitting on the couching watching TV.

"What did you DO!?"

"Had to happen eventually, baby."

I know he was right. But oh how I mourned the air mattress, my nest, my cozy little island in the middle of the house. The house is tidier now. You can actually walk around the living room. Annie can play on the carpet. It's good. And it did have to happen. But still.

Bittersweet....

So I'm back from my prepub tour, which was lovely and much fun. It was great to meet so many booksellers, and they truly are the nicest people. I know how rare of an opportunity a tour like this is for a debut author and I appreciated every moment of it. When I was in Toronto I had my first interviews, which was a whole new experience. John Barber from the Globe and Mail ran his article last weekend, which thrilled my friends and family ( and me).



But then I had to come home. See, what a lot of people didn't know, unless they were unlucky enough to ask how my dog was, then they heard far more details than they probably wanted, is that my beautiful Annie has cancer. For months I'd been fighting an invisible enemy. We consulted many vets and specialists. Annie endured test after test as we tried to find out what was wrong with her digestive system. Then a month ago I found a lump on her flank, which turned out to be a mast cell tumor. We were looking on the inside and the devil was on the outside.



After consulting five vets, I decided to give her a chance at life, and she underwent surgery to remove it. This was not an easy decision as she'd been through a lot already, but the vets were hopeful and the odds were good if they got it all. But what we didn't know was that she already had another tumor under her armpit. When I came back from the prepub tour, I talked to her vet and we decided not to do any more surgeries. This one is in an awful spot and the odds of her getting another one are too high. It's time to just let her be. I am hopeful we will have some time with her still. I don't know how long. But I'm trying to make the best of every moment.



I will try to blog more about my tour in the future, but right now I'm focusing on finishing NEVER KNOWING and trying to baby my baby. We take slow short walks, and I let her sniff every blade of grass to her heart's content. She is not as cuddly since she's been sick, but when she does allow me to hold her, I curl up against her back and inhale the scent of her fur, trying to memorize her. In the moments when she is playful, I rejoice. And I tell her in every way, every day, how much she means to me.



You might wonder why I'm sharing this, and I hope I'm not depressing the crap out of you. But I'm a writer, this is what we do. Put our pain on paper.



I've never in my life had such a juxtaposition in my worlds. Career wise, wonderful things are happening with my book. Things I worked for and dreamed about for years with nothing more than faith and hope to go on. But personally, I'm losing something so important to me it hurts to type these words. And I had to pause. Because writing it makes it so real.

How Nice is That!

So remember when I was saying how awesome book people are? Well, last week the fantastic folk at Fenn ( say that ten times fast! Fenntastic?) sent me the cardboard cut out of my cover!

It arrived on a day I sorely needed a cheer up--poor puppy had surgery--and it was also the fifth anniversary of when I first started writing STILL MISSING. Thanks Fenn!

Next week I'm leaving for my pre-pub tour. I'm very excited and I'm sure I'll have lots to blog about!