Today I’m excited to welcome author Olivia Hardin to my blog. This is part of her blog tour for her book Shifty Business.
I had a totally different plan for this guest blog today, but the passing of my grandma a few days ago made me a little introspective so I thought I’d take a different road.
It seems that one of the most common interview questions I receive is something along the line of “what made you decide to become a writer.” I usually tell about how I have dreams that are so vivid I’m moved to put them to paper. I always have different stories churning around in my head. But which came first, the chicken (the dreams) or the egg (heredity)? This has had me wondering lately.
My mawmaw could tell some stories. She was a real chatterbox and was always coming up with anecdotes and tales of her past or the past of someone else in the family. I’m not sure how I got the idea, but years ago I started giving mawmaw blank journals for Christmas. It was perhaps the best thing I ever did because I now have about six of those notebooks chock full of her stories.
And of course I’m now wondering, could my penchant for writing come in part from my mawmaw? Did I inherit it from her? I’d be pretty honored if that were the case.
So, in honor of her, let me share a little something I grabbed from one of those notebooks she left me:
There are some smells and sounds that immediately take me back to childhood.
[There] is honeysuckle. I could wake up at night and smell them on the trellis on grandma’s house. And when my husband would take me home from parties we would park by this waterfall and they were on the fence by the falls too.
In the mornings I would hear grandma grinding coffee and then I would smell bacon frying and biscuits baking. Her coffee was so good and her home churned butter and jams. I had a good childhood. She loved me so much and she loved my Henry [mawmaw’s husband, my grandfather] too.
I hope you’ll forgive a gal for being a little sentimental today and that you’ve enjoyed this little snippet into who I am and who my lovely grandmother was. I’ve already touched base with some of my family memories for my short story “Dark Road Winding” in the Once Upon a Midnight Dreary Anthology and you can be sure there will be more in my future works.
Happy reading, All!
~Olivia
Shifty Business (Bend-Bite-Shift Trilogy Book 3)
Gerry Hinton thought she had the perfect career as an operative for the Company. Her next assignment should have been another “mission accomplished”, but hell was delivering hand baskets that day.
When a little girl gives a mysterious silver box to Gerry, her world self-destructs. Suddenly under constant mental attacks, the only person who can save her is her partner, Nicky–but nothing comes without a cost. Secrets buried deep in the past begin to rise, threatening everything she holds dear.
If she can’t out run her past, can she save her future?
About Author Olivia Hardin
About the Author – Olivia Hardin realized early on how strange she was to have complete movie-like character dreams as a child. Eventually she began putting those vivid dreams to paper and was rarely without her spiral notebooks full of those mental ramblings. Her forgotten vision of becoming an author was realized when she connected with a group of amazingly talented and fabulous writers who gave her lots of direction and encouragement. With a little extra push from family and friends, she hunkered down to get lost in the words. She’s also an insatiable crafter who only completes about 1 out of 5 projects, a jogger who hates to run, and is sometimes accused of being artistic, though she’s generally too much of a perfectionist to appreciate her own work. A native Texas girl, Olivia lives in the beautiful Lone Star state with her husband and their puppy Bonnie.
Connect with her Online – Blog | Goodreads | Twitter | Facebook
February 8, 2013 at 10:06 am
Thanks for letting me talk about my MawMaw today on your blog. Happy reading, everyone!
~Olivia