Ane Mulligan – Romantic Interview – Part 1 of 1

Shannon here: Ane Mulligan shares insight into her latest collection, A Southern Season along with her 3 co-authors. Comment or answer the question at the end of the post to enter the drawing for a copy. Deadline: Nov 24th, 11:59 pm central time. Here’s Ane:

• What is your idea of perfect happiness? 

Eva Marie Everson:
I don’t know that I’ve ever been perfectly happy. There are moments, stolen and precious, that feel perfect. When the world and its nonsense are forgotten. When my family is around me and everyone is healthy and happy and the future appears positive. But we all know those moments are fleeting. That life changes on a dime. However, joy is a different animal. Peace is a different animal. That comes from somewhere deep inside. That’s a God-gift. But happiness is fleeting.

Claire Fullerton:
A long walk through the woods. There’s a place in County Galway, Ireland, right outside the town of Gort called Coole Park. Lady Augusta Gregory, a patron of artists at the center of the Irish Literary Revival, once lived on the grounds and held parties for literary types, such as William Butler Yeats and George Bernard Shaw. Today, Coole Park is 1,00 acres of wooded parkland. My idea of perfect happiness is a walk on the grounds of Coole Park.

Linda Yezak:
Perfect happiness is having one-on-one time with members of our family. We live far enough away from each other that frequent visits aren’t likely. We get together as a group, but spending time with each individual family unit is a treasure and my idea of heaven.

Ane Mulligan:
Being surrounded by my family finds me at my happiest. And I love a mountain lake. Some people are beach people. I’m a mountain/country girl. And God gave me a happy gene, so I’m rarely anything but happy. Even when life hands me lemons, I can be found mixing in some sugar to make lemonade.

• What kinds of settings do you find romantic?

Eva Marie Everson:
Wherever my husband happens to be.

Claire Fullerton:
Indoors, any dimly lit room with a wood-burning fire, with a little peat-moss thrown in beneath a carved stone-mantle. Outside, an autumn, grassy knoll beneath an Oak tree near a running stream.

Linda Yezak:
Romantic settings: sunrise strolls on the beach or in the Texas Hill Country with my sweet Billy, or anywhere he gives me his special smile and everything around us melts away.

Ane Mulligan:
Okay, you’re going to laugh, but working in the theatre’s scene shop side-by-side with my husband. My Brit is not the romantic type, but when I help him build something … well it brings out a little romance in him.

About the authors:
Eva Marie Everson is the bestselling, multiple award winning author of both fiction and nonfiction titles. She and her husband make their home in Central Florida.

Claire Fullerton is the author of Mourning Dove, Dancing to an Irish Reel, and A Portal in Time. Claire is represented by Julie Gwinn of the Seymour Literary Agency. She is from Memphis, Tn., and now lives in Malibu, CA.

Award winning author Linda W. Yezak lives in a forest in east Texas. Thirty years after gaining her BA in English, she’s finally putting her degree to good use, combining it with her natural inclination toward story-telling to create fun, unique novels.

Ane Mulligan writes Southern-fried fiction served with a tall, sweet tea. She’s an award-winning, best-selling novelist and playwright, who believes chocolate and coffee are two of the four major food groups.

About the book – A Southern Season: 

Four seasons. Four stories. Each one set in the enchanting world of the South. These are the kinds of stories your grandmother told you from a front porch swing.

Ice Melts in Spring by Linda W. Yezak
When Kerry Graham’s boss forces her to return to the Gulf of Mexico where her husband drowned years ago, she feels only spring’s chill and not the warmth of the Texas sun. Can the joy of a reclusive author and the compassion of a shrimp-boat preacher thaw Kerry’s frigid heart?

Lillie Beth in Summer by Eva Marie Everson
With the untimely death of his wife, Dr. James Gillespie believes God has abandoned him. He also believes he’s never met anyone like the young widow Lillie Beth, whose beloved Granny lies dying at home, and who sees a God who sweeps hope through a farmhouse window. Can a young woman whose husband died in Vietnam restore a faith that is all but dead.

Through an Autumn Window by Claire Fullerton
Because her larger than life mother Daphne Goodwyn is dead, forty-year-old Cate returns to Memphis with one thought in mind: something always goes wrong at a Southern funeral. But surrounded by the well-mannered society that raised her, the nostalgic rites of a three-day, autumn mourning bring the unexpected gift of the end of sibling rivalry.

A Magnolia Blooms in Winter by Ane Mulligan
With Broadway stardom within her reach, Morgan James returns home in winter to help an old friend. Maybe it s just nostalgia, but when she sees him again, an old flame rekindles. When she s called back to NYC to take the lead in a new musical, will fame be worth losing the man she loves?

Question for Readers: What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Come back Nov 16th for Morgan Busse!