Anne's Blog

It's at about this time of every year that I get nostalgic for an Easter-family Christmas. (Yes, I have heard all the Easter/Christmas jokes!) One of my first Christmas memories was at five years old during our three years in Germany. Our German nanny, Anneliese, taught my mother how to make an adventscrantz to hang in the hallway at the bottom of the wide staircase in our rented house in Hamburg. (My father was a British Army colonel and Port Commandant of the port just after WWII.) We learned the tradition of singing carols and lighting one of the candles each Sunday of the four weeks before Christmas. There were a few celebrations where we were not altogether as a family, while my parents lived in Egypt and we three kids were farmed out to grandparents, godparents or aged great-aunts--and sometimes not together. But when we were back as a family in England, music played a big part in the festivities--my father being a trained singer and a self-taught pianist, and all

Anne signing after the Jabberwocky launch on Nov. 15th. "But surely this isn't right?" I told the bellman of the brand new Trump Hotel in Chicago (yes, I know!). "I am just a lowly novelist." "I assure you this is your suite, madam," he replied, grinning and opening the door wider into two enormous rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and a marble bathroom with a bath I could swim laps in. I squeaked a "thank you," and he retired with a paltry tip in his hand. That was then --2009 to be exact--on one of the stops on my third book tour across the country in support of The King's Grace .. I'd made enough of a name for myself as a Simon & Schuster author to warrant them sending me to Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Chicago, Memphis, St. Louis, Portland OR, and Seattle. Now, it's couch-surfing with friends and Holiday Inns at our own expense. Then : At each airport I was met by an escort who drove me to the hotel and checked