All about me

By Anna Kathryn Lanier

Like some of my other bloggers, I don’t think my life is very interesting, but I know other people think differently.  I know some people who have never driven further than 50 miles from where they were born.  People ask me where I’m from.  Well….my father was in the Air Force. I’m from all over.  I’ve lived in eight states, three of them twice, one U. S. Territory and a foreign country. Here are my wanderings:  I was born in Kansas and at 18 months, I moved to California, where we moved a couple of times to different towns.  My earliest memories are from there, the first true memories included (not what family said, or what the home movies showed).  When I was six, we moved to Guam for two years, then to North Carolina.  From there, we went to Texas. Dad retired from the Air Force while at Carswell AFB in Ft. Worth. Then we followed my mom’s career as a restaurant manager and went to New Mexico, first Las Cruces (where I graduated high school) and then to Albuquerque.  Oh, wait, it was between my junior and senior year that I went to Finland as an exchange student.  Okay, so after graduating high school when I came back from Finland, I moved to Albuquerque, got married and moved to Colorado, where I had my first daughter; then we all moved back to New Mexico before going to Louisiana. 

(Jim and me)

In Louisiana, my husband did the best thing he could ever do for me….he left me for his pregnant girlfriend.  A few months later, I met a man who had just moved into my apartment complex. Less than a year later, Jim and I were married and moving to West Virginia.  There I had another daughter.  I lived six years in Charleston, the longest I’d lived in one house my whole life.  We then moved back to Louisiana and lived there, in the same house, for eight years. My husband was transferred to Houston, Texas and we’ve been here for 10 years….officially the longest I’ve lived anywhere.  We’ve been married for over 24 years, too.

(Me and my two daughters, Tiffany and Holly)

It was while living in Albuquerque for the second time that I wrote my first romance novels, long-hand in spiral notebooks.  When in Louisiana for the first time (right after my husband left me), I submitted my first book to Harlequin.  Since I knew nothing of synopsis, agents, or even writing, it was rejected outright!  No surprise there, knowing what I know now!  While in West Virginia and back in Louisiana, I didn’t really write, I was busy with my two girls, church and Girl Scouts (I was a leader for 13 years).

It wasn’t until moving to Texas ten years ago that I got serious about writing again.  I wrote two novels in 6 months and, though they suck, they did get me back into the writing mode.  I took a Creative Writing Class at the local community college and learned that I knew NOTHING about writing—I mean, double spacing, one-inch margins AND you don’t justify?  I also learned about local writing groups and Romance Writers of America.  It was a few years afterward that I was published.  I now have several short stories and novellas out there, but no full-length novel.

(I love this picture of the grandkids, Emma, Lacey and Ethan)

(At my mother's 70th Birthday Party...all dressed up)

My two girls grew up, as kids will do and married (and divorced), but I have 3 grandchildren, Ethan, Emma and Lacey.  One daughter remarried and she, her new, better husband and Lacey live with my husband and me. (My family seems to do better the second time around….I don’t know why that is).

In 2005, I decided to finally go to college. I went to the same community college I’d taken the creative writing classes and enrolled.  In 2007, at the age of 47, I got an Associate of Arts degree in Education/History. I was going to go on and get the full Bachelor’s degree, but life got in the way, namely in the name of said grandchildren.  Instead, I’ve started substitute teaching.  I’m enjoying that, since I don’t have deal with parents, lesson planning or administration. (Though I did get called to the principal’s office once, because I left a teacher a ‘goodie bag’ with information about my books….)

My first romances were contemporaries, then I wrote two historicals, one set in America in the 1780’s and one in Texas in the 1840’s….none of them are publishable.  I worked on another historical (full-length), and some short stories, most of those contemporary.   As said, the shorts are published, the full-length is being revised, with hopes of FINALLY being publishable!

I have a blog that I keep fairly active with recipes, guest bloggers, reading suggestions and odds and ends, http://annakathrynlanier.blogspot.com/ and my website, with info on my stories, is at www.annakathrynlanier.com.

So, there’s my life, mostly.  Plain and ordinary, except for the voices in my head!