I cannot thank you enough for your sweet, encouraging comments about the book. Your kindness means the world to me and has helped to take the edge off of my book-related angst. I’m working on another post that I’ll put up tonight, but in the meantime, I want to introduce you to my friend Anne, who has written a fantastic young adult fiction book called Shadows of the Hidden. Yay, Anne!

See? It is very mysterious.

It was one day about five or six years ago, I think, when I was totally immersed in some mundane task (sorting paperclips, maybe? throwing away all the receipts in my purse?) and overheard my friend Anne talking to another friend of ours about sending query letters to literary agents. My head shot up like a rocket.

“HOLD ON,” I said. I knew that Anne had written a book, but I had no idea that she was so, well, GROWN UP about the whole thing. “You’re looking for an agent? Like somebody who will represent your publishing interests?”

“I am!” she answered.

And I thought that was the fanciest thing I’d ever heard.

At the time I didn’t have any plans to write a book, but that didn’t matter. I just loved talking about writing with Anne. Since then we have had approximately 1496 conversations (a rough estimate) about how we write and when we write and how sometimes we HAVE TO WRITE. Anne mostly writes young adult fiction, and listening to her talk about her ideas for plots, for characters, for alternate realities (oh yeah she does) never fails to fascinate me. And bless her heart, she’s probably had to listen to me talk about my writing insecurities more than anybody else in the Birmingham area, so you might want to keep her in your prayers.

Sure enough, Anne eventually found an agent, and it’s been so fun to sit back and watch her dream of being published come true. She has worked so hard, and she has worked cheerfully, always choosing to see the bright side at every bump in the road. I love that about her.

Here. Let me show you a picture so that you and Anne can get better acquainted.

(HI, ANNE.)

And here’s some info about her book, which greatly interfered with my sleep two nights in a row because I could not put it down. This is a book that’s appropriate for teenagers but fun for grown-ups, too, so it’s a win for the whole family.

PLOT SUMMARY:

Natalie Watson doesn’t believe her parents are dead, even though they disappeared five years ago. Discovering the truth about their fate is one of the only things that get her out of bed in the morning. But after moving from her home in Georgia to her aunt’s boarding school in Maine, solving the mystery of her parents’ whereabouts is just one of several challenges she must face. When she’s not fending off attacks from the popular kids, she puzzles over the rumors about a strange boy in her math class–one with fiery red hair who rarely speaks.

Despite suspicions that he murdered his sister a year earlier, Natalie finds it impossible to stay away from Liam Abernathy–especially when he confesses to knowing something about her parents. Soon she’s following him into the forest, where things happen she doesn’t understand…things that shouldn’t be possible.

Natalie soon realizes her connection to Liam is deeper than she ever imagined, and not everyone she counts as a friend can be trusted. When she finds herself at the center of a centuries-old quest for immortality, she must work with Liam to stay alive–even if it means facing a truth about herself and her family that will not only shake her perception of herself, but of the entire world around her.

EXCERPT:

The grinding of a key in a lock sends adrenaline shooting through my veins. I stagger to my feet in a fog of panic and lunge for the closet door handle, catching a glimpse of Liam’s red hair just before I shut myself into darkness.

Was I fast enough? Did he see me?

The clink of metal against wood makes me jump; he must have tossed his key on the desk. I shut my eyes and try to keep my breathing even, but my lungs are working overtime and I’m terrified he’ll hear me. What am I going to do if he finds me here? What reason could I possibly give for hiding in his closet?

Hey, I’m part of the new Closet Safety committee. Just checking out your shelves. These are some solid looking brackets.

Right.

His heavy footsteps cross the room, growing nearer to my inadequate hiding place, and I press a hand over my nose and mouth. Maybe he’ll go to the dining hall for dinner and I can escape. Or maybe he wants to take a shower after going…wherever he went. Eventually, he’ll have to use the bathroom, right? And then I can make a break for it.

The closet door jerks open and Liam’s face appears. Horror explodes in my chest, but it’s instantly eclipsed by disbelief at two things—the battered state of his face and the knife in his hand. He’s holding it above his head like he’s ready to kill me.

I fall back into his clothes with a shriek.

BLURBS:

Medeia Sharif, author of Bestest. Ramadan. Ever.:

“This novel kept me on the edge of my seat. It was quite suspenseful with a unique historical twist to the paranormal. With great characters and non-stop action, it kept me hooked until the very last page.”

Krissi Dallas, author of the Phantom Island series:

“A riveting mystery filled with realistic teenage drama, suspenseful twists, and an extraordinary quest for the truth… Anne Riley is a refreshing storyteller with the ability to keep me desperately turning those pages for more adventure!”

Anne is giving away two autographed copies of Shadows of the Hidden, so if you’d like to enter, just click on the widget below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I’m closing comments on this post to avoid any confusion about how to enter the giveaway – and also to encourage you to go see Anne over at her blog (this post is one of my favorites).

I’ll see y’all later tonight; be warned that I have some thoughts about American Idol (yes, I caved and started watching again) and some other stuff, too. Hope y’all are having a great Thursday!

First of all, that title up there? Least imaginative ever. But everything I thought of was way too long (not that that’s ever stopped me before) or self-deprecating to the point of deeply awkward. So I went with bland. It seemed like the eh thing to do.

Second of all, my book (it’s called A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet, but Martha gets the title mixed up and calls it A Little Bit of Salt and A Whole Lot of Sugar!) comes out in about nine weeks. I can’t think about it / type it / say it / allude to it without wanting to breathe into a paper bag. I mean, I’ve never actually used a paper bag as a breathing aid before, but I’ve seen it in the movies several times and it looks like it’s super effective. And for the record, my runner-up hypothetical coping mechanism is to lock myself in a room and watch all the seasons of Flipping Out. Or maybe I’d watch Veronica Mars. I guess it would depend on my mood.

I’m spending way too much time focusing on my pretend emotions, aren’t I?

Third of all, some talented people who work for my publisher made me a very sassy book page, and it is now up-and-running right here on the blog. For some reason I like the fact that it’s here and not on some official author site (note: I do not in fact have an official author site, so that might make hosting a book page there sort of tricky). REGARDLESS, even though I’m basically 94 kinds of terrified for anyone to read my book, this blog feels like home to me, so it all seems more comforting and less likely to cause panic attacks if the book page is just kind of hanging out here, dozing when nobody’s looking at it and also hoping that somebody might stop by with a bucket of fried chicken or something.

(I know I’m rambling right now. But you must understand that my mind is pretty much A DEATH TRAP OF FEAR.)

So. Here’s the book page. There’s a place where you can download the first chapter if you’re into that sort of thing (it’s actually the table of contents, the introduction, and the first chapter, but I am giving you way more information than necessary because my nerves are kind of WOUND UP right now). And listen – if you have no interest in downloading the first chapter, I totally understand. A little bit of me goes a long way. Especially when I’m feeling like Judy Grimes.

Anyway, thanks for being so kind and supportive and all-around wonderful. And thanks to Tyndale for making the book page, because if the promotion of this book had been left to me, the marketing campaign would look something like this:

I wrote a book. But you don’t have to buy it. I hope I haven’t bothered you. Would you like some bacon?

The end.

edited to add this P.S. – I forgot to mention that there are some Pinterest-y and Twitter-y things at the bottom of the page…just wanted to point that out since there were some very nice people who went to the trouble of designing that stuff, and I think they did a great job. So grateful for them!

For some reason I feel the need to tell you that I am typing this post on HIGH ALERT. Alex went to bed about thirty minutes ago, and he wasn’t feeling so hot. His main complaints were a stomachache and “a shaky feeling,” so I feel like we are now on a countdown for Stomach Virus ’13. I’m trying to remember that his late afternoon “snack” of chocolate cake and Sour Patch Kids may very well be the cause of his stomach woes, and as much as I hate to see the little guy not feeling his best, I have to say that I’ll take the fallout from a sugar high over a stomach bug any day of the week. And I’ll take it ALL. DAY. LONG.

Clearly he felt much better earlier.

(I did something weird when I was making that little collage and now the right side isn’t the same size as the left side.)

(I’m going to go ahead and post it as-is, but if you wake up tomorrow and the whole world has in fact fallen apart as the result of my sloppy collage skills, then please know that I’m just as sorry as I can be.)

So I was going to tell you all about our Saturday in Mississippi at my parents’ house and our very relaxing Easter Sunday here in Birmingham, but David just walked by, saw me writing a blog post, and said, “Can you please see if somebody can help us with our pillow situation?”

And yes. Yes, I can.

Perhaps I should explain.

We have an obnoxious number of pillows on every bed in this house. On our bed we have all the shams and decorative what-nots – and then we have four king-sized pillows that I absolutely despise. They look pretty when the bed is made, but if there’s a way to sleep comfortably on them, I have yet to figure that out. On our guest room bed we also have all the shams and decorative what-nots – and then about six regular bed pillows stacked behind the decorative stuff. We haven’t always had that many pillows in the guest room, but over the holidays we had a ton of company, and I kept moving pillows to that bed so that people would have plenty of pillow options. And since I don’t like the king-sized pillows on our bed, I will occasionally grab one of the standard pillows in the guest room and try to make it work for me.

(Please add the previous paragraph to your file folder that has “Trivial First World Problems” written on the outside of it.)

(Because GAH.)

Anyway, for the last couple of months I’ve been waking up with weird tension headaches. At first I thought it was sinus ish-ahs, but after sleeping on a delightful pillow when I was in Dallas for dotMOM and waking up headache-free, I realized that what I’m dealing with is a pillow problem. Sure enough, the headaches started again when I got home, and I think this is because I either sleep with my head too high when I try to use one of the king-sized pillows, and when I try one of our standard pillows, they are all so BROKE DOWN that I end up stacking a couple of them on top of each other and sleeping with my neck kind of jacked up off the mattress.

Doesn’t that sound comfortable? And also refreshing?

D has also started waking up with pillow-related headaches and neck aches (he had a pillow that he loved, but alas, it is old and tired), and we have come to the conclusion that we are in need of a pillow overhaul in our house (and especially in our room). We don’t like all-feather pillows because they make me sneeze and itch, two conditions that you’d really like to avoid when you’re trying to rest. Honestly, the fact that our pillows have even become an issue makes me feel like we’re 109 – I mean, when I was in college, I could sleep with my head on the arm of a sofa and wake up feeling 72 kinds of refreshed – but I guess pillow problems are one of the unexpected perks of the 40s.

And when I say “perks,” what I really mean is “SWEET MERCY THIS MAKES ME FEEL OLD.”

D and I both want pillows that are supportive – but by the same token they need to have some give (to avoid the aforementioned sensation of feeling like my head is resting six inches above the mattress). Also, we’ve tried those sculpted memory foam pillows that are supposed to be good for neck alignment or whatever, but I found that particular option to be so burning up hot that I wondered OH MY WORD HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR A PILLOW TO BE MADE OF FIRE?

So that pillow is probably not the solution.

Do any of you have any standard pillow suggestions? Any brands you’d recommend? If I sound a little desperate, that’s because I am.

Well, as desperate as a person can be about pillows. Which, honestly, is probably fairly low on the desperation scale.

Thanks in advance for your help – and I hope y’all had a wonderful Easter!

…I hit “publish” before I meant to hit “publish.” Which is why the previous post is composed of three sentence fragments and THE END.

Listen. This blog stuff is tricky. I’ve only been at it 7 1/2 years. Clearly I still haven’t quite made my way around the learning curve.

Anyway, I wanted to post a more, um, comprehensive list of recent favorites, so I think I’ll try again.

– A couple of months ago I started using Pureology Colour Stylist Root Lift, and y’all, it is a wonder. I have such fine hair, and a little bit of this stuff makes a world of difference, especially in the crown area. I’m crazy about this product…I even hauled it to the beach last week, even though we all know that there is no reasoning with beach hair.

– Emily’s post – for alcoholics and the people who love them: hope on Good Friday – is tender, vulnerable, and hopeful. Such a sweet reminder that things don’t have to be the way they’ve always been.

– I nodded my head all the way through Shaun’s latest post, especially this part: “I tell him he matters. I read him the words. I tell him he’s not defined by opinions or failures, intellect or talent. I tell him Jesus hung on a tree so he doesn’t have to. I tell him about grace. I tell him he’s loved – unshakably unbreakably forever loved.” Some mighty timely words, at least for me…and I’m betting for somebody else, too.

– And speaking of timely words – well, THIS. Such great, healthy perspective, especially if you have a tendency to feel like you should be passionate about the same stuff as everybody else.

(Not that I have any experience with that, of course.)

(Ahem.)

– I love free printables.

This is such a pretty free printable for Easter – or for any time of year, really.

– So I know that the website Parents Shouldn’t Text is a little, um, colorful every once in awhile, but most of the time it’s just plain funny. And this text made me laugh so hard.

Hope y’all have a wonderful Easter weekend with the people you love most!

This post by Angie.

So good. And so wise.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not the biggest fan of Italian food.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I love the pieces that form the Italian food puzzle. Bread? Yep. Tomatoes? Yep. Cheeses? They’re my love language.

But when you start combining the pieces of the puzzle, I’m not always carried away with the end result. I’m not crazy about spaghetti, lasagna, or even pizza. I like brown sauces more than red sauces. I think pasta is fine and good, but if I had to do without it for the rest of my life, I’d be okay with that. Just please don’t take away my bacon.

However, there are two fellas in this house who adore all forms of Italian food. I make spaghetti with meat sauce every couple of weeks just because it’s one of their favorites (that’s usually a night when I’ll eat leftovers or spoon a little bit of the meat sauce over a piece of toast or something like that). I like making lasagna because it lasts for several meals, but it’s never something that I crave. Chicken parmesan is popular with my people, too (this recipe is my go-to), but I usually only make it once every three or four months because of that tomato / noodle combo that I should probably like way more than I do.

So here’s my ongoing dilemma where Italian food is concerned: I absolutely love cooking meals that my family will enjoy (seriously. it’s one of the happiest parts of my day.), but if I’m going to spend a chunk of each afternoon in the kitchen, it’s kind of a nice bonus if I enjoy the meal, too. And I’m certainly not saying that it’s the height of earthly misery if I have to eat spaghetti – that’s not the case at all – but sometimes it’s just not as much fun to prepare a meal when you feel sort of meh about the outcome.

A couple of months ago I tried an Italian soup recipe because it struck me as something that my husband would really like, and much to my surprise, I liked it, too. The recipe called for sausage instead of ground beef, and I am here to tell you that I had no idea what a great combination sausage, tomatoes, and spinach would be (don’t judge me, people of Italian heritage – remember that I grew up in Mississippi, where we eat most of our sausage with biscuits and gravy). I never expected that the tortellini soup would teach me such a handy little lesson, but I’ve been on the look-out for Italian-ish recipes with sausage ever since.

Well.

Yesterday I made Shay‘s recipe for Sausage and Provolone Pasta, and y’all, it is absolutely delicious – one of the happiest mealtime surprises that I’ve had in awhile. In fact, Alex had taken all of two bites before he said, “Mama? I don’t know how you cooked these noodles, but they are delicious.” The recipe makes a ton, and with bread and salad, a family of four could get two meals out of it and still have leftovers. Easy and oh-so-tasty.

(Clearly I am not a food photographer.)

(However, I try not to let that stop me from taking some shockingly sub-par photos.)

Anyway. I just wanted to pass along the recipe because when you find a good ‘un, it’s fun to share. I will definitely make this dish again – because I don’t know if you noticed, but it’s an Italian-ish combo, and I enjoyed it every bit as much as my fellas did. It’s our own little March Madness miracle.

Wonders never cease.