Mom's Day and News to Go

My mother and father on their wedding day in 1939. The photo is old, but this was a day of beginnings for my mother. A couple of years later she became a mom when my older sister was born. I came along the last of three daughters. She was the very best mother I could have had. A lot of people think that about their mothers, and that's good. But for me, my mom is best. Dad's been gone for over twenty years now and Mom at 91 is having some health struggles. Her memory is giving out on her and she doesn't get up and down easily. Things are hard, but she still tries to hang in there and live the best she can. 

I wrote about her as "My Mother, My Friend, My Character" in a guest blog for Bookreporter.com  http://blog.bookreporter.com/blog/2011/05/ann-h-gabhart-my-mother-my-friend-my-character. She and her stories were so instrumental in getting a true historical background for Angel Sister. 

My mother got married the day after she graduated from high school. She was 19. In a few years our country was plunged into war. Dad didn't get called up because he was a farmer, but two of mom's sisters' husbands went into the service. Both came home but many men did not. Tom Brokaw wrote a book titled The Greatest Generation. I read his book and I think he got the title right. But that's another post for another day. This is a day to honor mothers. I have a beautiful mother who loved me. I don't think I could ask for any more. Not only that, but I love being a mother. Each of my children were and are still a blessing to me. And now their families are added on blessings.

  

I talked about being a mom and my mom too in a newsletter I sent out yesterday. I have been trying to get going on a new newsletter for a while, but that deadline kept glaring at me. It still is, but I decided to take time to tell all my reading friends Happy Mother's Day and to give than a chance to read about my new book, The Blessed coming out in a few weeks, and about the celebration giveaway I'm going to have. I'm giving away 5 copies of The Blessed, one of Angel Sister along with an angel statue, and two books that will be the winner's choice of my titles. All you have to do to enter is send me an e-mail from Facebook or my website or leave a comment with a way I can contact you in case you win. You get extra chances to win if you let me know you've never won anything from my website and if you tell me about a blessing you got from reading something. I'll do the drawing in June. Also if you'd like to get my occasional newsletter, just let me know and I'll add your name to my newsletter list. You can be assured that I never give out your e-mail addresses to anyone. The giveaway is available only to residents of the U.S. and Canada. There are legal restrictions on these giveaways for other countries.

Thanks for reading. Tell me something about your mother.

Happy Mother's Day!!

~~One thing all of us have in common is that we have a mother. Father too but it's not Father's Day so we're not talking about him today. Here's a picture of my mom and my youngest granddaughter. Nothing like a baby to bring joy out in a mama, grandmama or great grandmama. It is such a blessing to be part of a family that can enjoy the interaction of several generations.

~~I've been posting Mother's Day sayings on Facebook this week. The one I found that I liked best was by Jill Churchill. "There's no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one." None of us are perfect. But most all of us work hard to be good moms. Love can cover a multitude of mistakes. I made some with my kids that I still regret, but life moved on. The kids survived my imperfect mothering and thrived under my mother love.

~~But thinking about moms got me to wondering about the mothers in my novels. And you know, I haven't written about many good moms. Anyway not that were still breathing when the story is happening. In my Hollyhill books, Jocie's mother deserted her when Jocie was five. That isn't one of the million ways to be a good mom for sure. Adrienne comes into the story more in the Summer of Joy and I hope I made her real. She was very real to me and a very important part of the story in the first two books even though she only appeared in those stories in Jocie's and David's memory. In the third book, I tell some of the story from Adrienne's viewpoint and I think the scene in the doctor's office where she's getting a diagnosis of breast cancer is one of the better scenes I've ever written. Nobody else has ever told me that, so that might just be a writer's delusion. I also had Leigh's mother in that book - another mother with some issues. In fact reading those books, nobody would know what a great mother I have. Nothing of the mothers in those books came from personal experience with my own mother.

~~Gabrielle's mother in The Outsider wouldn't win any mother of the year awards either and after they join the Shakers, Gabrielle and her mother have a Shaker sister relationship. In The Believer, Elizabeth has a good mother, but she dies before the story starts. In The Seeker (in stores soon!!) Charlotte's mother died when Charlotte was fifteen. I'm beginning to note a trend here. But I'm saved from being too predictable by Angel Sister due out in January 2011 where Nadine is a wonderful mother. My kind of mom. And breathing all through the story. That's a good thing for that story. In my next book I'm going to have a fantastic mother character who lives to be 102. ;-)

~~I sent out newsletters. A lot of them bounced back at me. I loaded them up with too much info and pictures, I guess. Someday I'll learn this stuff - maybe. I'll try to resend tomorrow. Anyway I am doing giveaways in June and the first week of July for autographed copies of The Seeker when it comes out. If you want to enter in the fun, just make a comment here or send me an e-mail from my website, http://www.annhgabhart.com/. I'll be doing a drawing every week in June and then the first week in July doing two drawings with one just for those of you who haven't yet won one of my books. Then I'll include something from the Shaker village gift shop in one of those drawings. Not sure what yet, but something Shaker related.

~~Hope you had a great Mother's Day with lots of good times and that you were able to tell your mom you loved her. But if she's no longer with you, I hope you have many good memories that make you smile and remember the million ways she was a good mom.