Anne McAllister's Blog

Look Who’s Here!

February 6th, 2012 by Anne

Sometime after the amazing Sid died, life seemed to go south. I’m not exactly sure why or even where it went. But suffice to say, I went AWOL and I apologize for that. I think I must have spent ages wandering in circles in the woods. Or something.

Can I recount the events of those four months? Probably not. Nothing momentous actually. Just a lot of little things that seemed to require more attention than usual.

Briefly I have been writing a book that began last August from a dead standstill on account of the powers that be asking me to write another book instead of the Christmas book I was working on because they wanted a book in between it and the book coming out in March or April of 2012 (Savas’s Wildcat — more on that later).

Did I have an idea?

In a word, No.

But I tried. Dear Lord, I tried.

I found a story — and a couple of people and we all three got together halfway through one of April Kihlstrom’s Book in a Week courses and began to work. It was, indeed, work. Writing is work, of course. But writing about people who didn’t have a breath of existence a week before was not easy. And it has not been easy. In fact I am hoping to finally finish them this week. The slightly humorous side, if you find this sort of thing funny, is that because I have taken so long to write it, it is now a Christmas book.

Sigh.

So . . . then I got the cover for The Night That Changed Everything. The US version is fine. Bland but nothing to set one’s teeth on edge. A nice cover. Not likely to send anyone screaming into the hills. Unfortunately I got it AFTER I got the UK cover. The UK cover was, in my estimation, dire. Well, that’s one four-letter word for it. To say I was dismayed is not to overstate the case. It made me not want to talk about the book at all.

That’s unfair, I realize, because I did love Edie and Nick and Santa Barbara where it took place was my old stomping grounds for my university days, and I went back while I was writing that book and loved being there again. It was a delightful time, and Edie and Nick were great to spend time with. So I apologize to them — and to you — for glossing over the book as if it didn’t exist. I still love the story. I just don’t care for the cover enough to not ever put it on my website. So you get the US cover, and that’s it.

Now I have Savas’s Wildcat coming out in April — I think – in both US and UK. I like the cover on both. Neither is going to make me jump up and down for joy — although the UK cover is actually not too bad. Though my red-headed heroine seems to have had a dye job sometime before she got her photo taken for the cover.

It’s the story of the youngest of the Savas brothers — Yiannis — and Catriona MacLean. It also takes place in California, on Balboa Island near Newport Beach, as a matter of fact, and was a joy to write because I got to go back and spend some time there the same summer I went to Santa Barbara. Who says you can’t go home again?

So, I’m back. And I’m hoping to stick around on a more regular basis now. I’m doing a monthly blog over at Tote Bags ‘n’ Blogs — the next one on February 8th — and another one every month at The Pink Heart Society (3rd Tuesday of the month). Hope you’ll stop by and say hi.

Liz Fielding and Kate Walker and I are getting together mid-month (can you say, Valentine’s Day?) to run our annual Here Come The Grooms! contest. Yiannis is gearing up for it — thinking up questions he can ask. I’ll have to go post his excerpt in anticipation of the event.

I’ve also discovered that I have no idea how to put images into a blog in the new word press interface that allows text-wrapping. So until I figure it out, we will be going image-less. Sorry!

What have you been up to?

Posted in Nick & Edie, Presents Extra, The NIght That Changed Everything | 4 Comments »

A Middle-of-the-Heart Cat

September 24th, 2011 by Anne

We love our pets. They make our lives richer, better, more complicated at times (try finding a dog-sitter for Thanksgiving weekend at the last minute), and one of the worst things on earth is when we lose them.

It’s awful when it happens, when we lose one of our own. It’s not supposed to happen with other peoples’ pets.

But it happened this past week to me when Sid died.

Most of you know Sid. He was the light of my dear friend Kate Walker’s life. He waltzed into her house one day and simply took over. There was life Before Sid, and Life During Sid was totally different.

He was the cat who made sitting and writing for hours in an office worthwhile – because, quite simply, he was there.

He could be snoozing on the chair or lying in the window or studying the effects of batting the mouse. It didn’t matter. He was endlessly entertaining – even when he slept.

I ask myself why. I asked Kate why.

Of all her cats, he was the most memorable. Of the four who were there when I first visited, Sid was the one who interacted with us. The others were lovely (well, Dylan, not so much. He was cantankerous and gruff, but he did have his soft spot).

Sid had a whole flabsack of soft spots. He tried to pretend he wasn’t interested in people, but he could never quite pull it off. He was too busy being in the center of things.

I read a book once that said that Maine Coon cats were “middle of the room” cats. If so, Sid was a Maine Coon cat in disguise. More than an Maine Coon cat actually because he wasn’t so much a middle of the room cat, as a “middle of the heart” cat.

You couldn’t help but fall in love with Sid.

I probably had half a dozen visits with Sid in my life. Each one was special. I frequently offered him hospitality on this side of the pond. I told him that the d.o.g.s. would be happy to see him. And they would.

But he’d done his wandering as a youth, and when he got to Kate’s, he made up his mind that that was where home was, and he wasn’t about to stray. So he never visited in person (in cat). But he frequently dropped into my email in-box.

He had a way with words, did Sid. He had Opinions and Views, and he didn’t hesitate to articulate them. He also had Standards – and he worked hard to bring Flora and Chaz (that’s Charlie) up to the mark. He never bothered to try with Dylan. Even Sid had his limits, and there are just some cats you know you can’t shape up.

I will miss his correspondence. There will be no more letters from Sir Sidney St John Willoughby Eamonn Portly-Lummox, DLitt Oxon, Bart., Earl of Blubberhouses and I forget what else (HE never forgot).

I will miss the new and wonderful photos that Kate would send when he was feeling photogenic. One year he sent me a calendar called A Year Of Sid – with a photo of Himself for each month. I still have it. I cherish it.

I also have a t-shirt with his picture on it (Can you tell that Sid didn’t need a marketing department. He had self-promotion down pat – not that he needed it. He got plenty of ear rubs and head scratches just by being himself). I have been wearing Sid’s t-shirt a lot these last few weeks because it made me feel closer to him.

He was, he used to tell me, A Cat of Superior Breeding. He even had an email address that was, in part, SidACOSB, because, well, why wouldn’t he?

But the truth is, he wasn’t A Cat of Superior Breeding. He was THE Cat. The one and only.

He’s left a Sid shaped hole in all parts of Kate’s life.

He’s left a Sid-shaped hole in my heart.

Posted in Authors, Cats, Heroes, Kate Walker, Personal | 12 Comments »

Where Did All the Summer Go?

August 31st, 2011 by Anne

I don’t know where summer went this year. Certainly it was plenty hot for a good stretch of time in our neck of the woods. So I was aware that summer was out there somewhere.

But I certainly feel like I missed great chunks of it.

There was, of course, Mom Camp. That was fun and educational. No. Really. It was.

And then there was the National Institute on Genealogical Research which was also fun and exhausting and even more educational and exhausting and enlightening and, did I mention, exhausting?

Really. It was, too.

And a good time was had by all – my daughter, my daughter-in-law and the Glowkid who is now 11, which I find hard to believe.

And then there was the deluge. 15” of rain in 12 hours in late July. Yikes.

We didn’t float away, but the back slope behind our yard did. Or at least the part of it that received the run-off from our neighbor’s recently built garage.

The rest of summer seems to have been spent with me doing another of April Kihlstrom’s wonderful Book-in-a-Week experiences (got half of my next one finished) and my husband, The Prof, repairing the slope ice-cream-bucket by ice-cream-bucket, carving terraces into it so that now we have our very own Macchu Picchu. It is seriously impressive.

Yesterday and today he was packing the terraced wall so firmly that there are hand and knuckle prints in it. I told him we needed some art work – a painting or two on the side of it to flummox the archaeologists of the 22nd century. I suggested he put in a dinosaur, a bison and the NBC peacock for variety.

And now it is almost labor day. The kids are all back in school. And I have a book to finish. Hopefully I’ll get it done by the end of the month.

Just wanted to touch base now. I have a few more things to say – and a wonderful dog to remember – in future posts. I’ll be back. I just didn’t want you to think I’d completely dropped off the face of the earth.

How was your summer? Or winter if you are so situated?

Posted in Personal | No Comments »