Guest Post: Karen White, author of The Girl on Legare Street

Today The Tome Traveller's Weblog welcomes author Karen White! I enjoy Karen's books so much (see my review of The Lost Hours here). Her most recent book is The Girl on Legare Street, sequel to The House on Tradd Street. Thank you for joining us, Karen!

People are surprised when I tell them that my life isn’t glamorous. Sure, my eleventh novel hit bookstores in November and even managed to reach the New York Times extended list, and my publisher is already working on a major book tour for the release of book #12 in May, and I just bought the cutest, most impractical yet expensive shoes just to wear on TV interviews. But at the moment, I’m dressed like a homeless woman because I’m in “just finished a book and now I’ve got to get into the holidays” mode, I’ve been yelled at twice by each resident teenager (not including the one “You can’t make me!” from the 16-year-old male child regarding his haircut appointment later this afternoon), I’m sitting on a bed covered with three loads of unfolded laundry and umpteen unwrapped presents and wrapping paper, and I’m thinking I need to take the dog to the vet tomorrow because he’s chewing on his leg which means he has another skin infection.

See what I mean?

Sure, I get lots of fan mail—my favorite part of this job—but all I have to do is glance up at the sticky kitchen counters, the shoes, text books, and sports apparatus scattered liberally around the house like pepper on scrambled eggs, and I’m back to the reality of my non-glamorous life.
I don’t want to burst anybody’s fantasy bubble, but I feel a dire need to set the record straight. I recently signed a two-book contract for the continuation of my Tradd Street mystery series, but the books are going to come out two years apart because I simply couldn’t fathom keeping up with writing two books a year and having a life, glamorous or otherwise. When I mentioned this at a book club, the readers—and I love them all!—were up in arms that they would have to wait so long between installments. I told them if I could get the two teenagers, husband, guinea pig and dog to move in with them for a year, I might be able to write a bit faster. Oddly enough, I didn’t have any takers.

Yesterday, as I was cleaning dog vomit from the back seat of my car, I found myself wondering why I make my life so crazy. Why do I have to write? Couldn’t I just keep to a leisurely schedule of a book every five years or so? The answer is easy: no. Writing isn’t just something I do—it’s who I am. When I get a story snagged in my brain, I’m compelled to write it—even if it means carting my laptop to the carpool line, the horse barn, the football field or the laundry room to get it written.

In my November book, The Girl on Legare Street, the protagonist, Melanie Middleton, is forced to reunite with her mother 33 years after her mother abandoned her. There are so many hurts and misunderstandings in their relationship until Melanie discovers the real reason why her mother left her all those years ago. But that’s more than three decades lost to both of them, decades of stories Melanie and her mother never shared with each other. And in all that time, Melanie relegated her mother to her past, as if she’d never existed and her stories didn’t matter.
I don’t want to be like Melanie; I want to experience life and all its stories—good and bad—then put them down onto the pages of books to share with others. Even if it means getting less sleep than I should, and sometimes picking my children up from school at 3:30 in the afternoon still wearing the pajamas I wore when I dropped them off.

My life might not be glamorous, but it’s mine, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Besides, my children won’t be teenagers forever, and before long I’ll have a quiet, orderly life and house, and they’ll be calling me and telling me how wonderful I am and asking for my advice about life. And if that doesn’t happen, then I’ll just have to write them into my books so I can bend them to my will. Hey, I’m the writer and in my world, fantasies happen.

For more information about Karen and all of her books, please visit her website. Merry Christmas!

Review: The Lost Hours by Karen White

Piper Mills has lived a life filled with loss. Her parents were killed when she was six years old, so she went to live with her grandparents. She was very close to her Grandfather, with whom she shared her love of horses and her drive to be an Olympic class show jumper.

Her relationship with her Grandmother was not close but Piper never felt the lack of that connection. When she was twelve, her Grandmother developed Alzheimer's disease and was placed in a nursing home. Driven Piper barely noticed her absence as she piled success on top of success, becoming a champion equestrian.

Her world quite literally came crashing down with a fall off of her horse during a competition. Piper was severely injured when the horse fell on her and for the next six years she quit riding, quit trying, quit living.

Until the death of her Grandfather shakes her out of her inertia. Piper comes into possession of some papers and heirlooms of her Grandmother's that, for the first time, spark her interest in learning about her Grandmother's past and make her regret her childish lack of care for the woman who had loved and raised her.

The mystery that Piper begins to unravel will take her into the family of her Grandmother's childhood friend, Lillian. Though she meets them under false pretenses, Piper begins to find the answers that she is looking for as well as the beginnings of her way out of the pain that she has lived with for so long.

The effects of loss, of various kinds, and of the process of grief and healing are at the heart of this powerful novel. It is a story that will remind you that the older generations will not be here forever. Treasure them, learn their stories, spend time with them and value them. All hours that have passed may be lost, but might not be wasted if we spend them wisely.

The Lost Hours made me long for one more day with my own wonderful Grandmother, even one more hour or minute. And I listened to many of her stories. But I know I have forgotten much of what she told me and I would give more than I now possess to hear her voice again.

You can learn more about the author, this book and her other novels at her website.

My thanks to Dorothy at Pump Up Your Book Promotion for sending me this book for review!