Reading My Own Books

It’s super, super weird to read in print for me.  I can’t justify it.  *Ever*

I thought.

But then I realized I was plotting out the two sequels to Song of Sorrow.  So, yesterday, I picked up a book I wrote a year ago, and I re-read it.

One, it was LUXURIOUS to curl up on my couch and read a book.  Even my own book.  Even for the purpose of writing/ working on books.  I had a dog behind my neck, one of my lap, and my book on my phone.  There was a blanket over my feet.  Man, oh man, those are they days.

Two, it was super weird to read my writing and revisit what was going through my head.

When I published Song of Sorrow, I was a month from finally sending back to their birth mother my first foster care placements, Boy Blue and Feisty Pants.  So, I was dealing with my own serious loss.  I had them in my home for ten months, saw them through some rough times, and miss them like I miss my Dad.  Desperately.

I probably wrote a book about parents losing their children because of that loss.

I was also mothering a baby girl–only fourteen months old.  Her big brother…who was three and a half.  And being semi-prepared for a new baby.  None of whom I was sure were going to stay with me.  So I was dealing with other, terrible emotions.

I can tell what I was thinking at the time by reading those words.  It was a weird little psychological trip.

Also, it was like reading it new again.  As if someone else had wrote it.  It had been so long and I’ve mostly been fighting with Snow White since I published that book that I had forgotten pieces of it.  And how much I like it.  And how proud I am of it.  My goal is make each subsequent book better than the ones before.  I hope that this is true not just of These Lying Eyes and Song of Sorrow.  But of Compelled by Love, Snow White, A Convenient Murder, and what comes thereafter.

Anyhoosen.  It was weird.

~Amanda

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