Anna DeStefano's Blog, page 16

Happy Ever After Holidays…

Are the holidays a happy ever after time for you, or is there something making it difficult to feel what everyone around you seems to? In between Thanksgiving and Christmas is some of my favorite time of the year. But there’s frequently a feeling that something’s a bit off, when I look closely at these special moments that mean so much. There’s the past. And there have been moments I haven’t felt as blessed as I do today. There are challenging memories to deal with over the holidays that make my Christmas ever after not quite as automatically happy.

Yes, my family had a great Thanksgiving this year. We’re thankful, if a bit too overfed. We’re back to work and maybe not minding it as much as before. We’ve shared special time with loved ones and friends. We’re optimistic about December being just as lovely or better. But…

Is there sometimes a but in your celebration sometimes over the holiday? If there is, you’re not alone. While commercials and songs and endless parties and celebrations remind us of everything we should cherish, there are some of us feeling a loss of something others take for granted. There are some of us still remembering a not-so-enchanted time that happened recently or maybe long ago. But…

Even if this isn’t the picture that always comes to mind when we think of a happy family holiday–

–we can learn to relax into the now going on around us, acutally SEE what’s in our lives now, even while we remember harder times, and hopefully rebuild our ability to have new happy ever after holidays going forward.

What real family and real holiday blessings and real happiness amidst a happy, Happy, HAPPY season means to some of us are running themes in Christmas on Mimosa Lane. I didn’t set out to make people cry on their road to reading my happily ever after ending. I really was going for poignant and sweet and glittery, because that’s what so many people want to read this time of year.

But what happened, as it always happens in my books, was something closer to reality. Not just my reality, but what the holiday can be like for so many of us, when we’re supposed to be so happy, as happy as all our friends, but somethings trying to hold us back. The challenge for my heroine, then, became how to fight back against that hold on her emotions and how to break through into a new life free from ties to a difficult past that’s kept her from moving on.

And I wondered as I wrote the book if readers would respond to the darker, deeper emotional story I was telling amidst the fun an cheerful and happy backdrop of a small town Christmas. Was it just me, wanting to see characters overcome what felt like real-world obstacles to reach the beautiful Christmas morning ending I’d written before I began the first chapter of the novel? Was I sunk, for having a hero and a heroine AND a little girl all struggling to even feel Christmas this year? Would I make anyone happy this year, with a story that means so much to me, but might not connect with what others are feeling?

 

Reader reviews on Amazon have been overwhelmingly positive. It’s gratifying to see this story touch so many hearts, helping folks feel such a powerful emotional ride–only to end in a stronger, more positive, hopeful, thankful place because of the difficult journey they’ve shared with me.

Are there memories making navigating the holidays  a challenge for you, while others seem to find the happy in this time of year so effortlessly? Have you conquered your own holiday blues in the past, so that this year is a sparkling reminder of all the good things you still have, instead of what’s lost? I’m dying to know–share your story in the comments.

NOTE: This topic is the first question in the reader’s guide included at the back of Christmas on Mimosa Lane. As promised to the many readers who’ve emailed to ask if I’d be talking about those questions, I’ll be tackling each reader guide topic here each Monday through the end of the year. So join us while we sit back and talk all kinds of happy (and sometimes emotional) holiday things. Come home with us, to Christmas on Mimosa Lane ;o)

Related Holiday Posts:

Holiday Memories
Hope for the Holidays
The BEST Holiday Memories are Made From the Darnedest Things
Holiday Traditions, Symbols and Themes

Holiday Memories: What makes yours last?

December 1st, my son opens his first Christmas present. Is he spoiled??? You bet. Am I? Ditto. While our family doesn’t make the entire holiday about gifts and “stuff,” we also don’t make it about a single day. It’s a season, including Thanksgiving, about family and being thankful and seeing the world for what it is–a place we share and celebrate together, no matter what else is going on. It’s about home. And December 1st is a great day to kick off that kind of awareness in our world.

What do happy holidays mean to you? How do you make sure those true meanings of things stay first in your mind, as the stress and craziness of what is always a crazy month try to take over?For us, it’s sticking closer to home than going away and working on things as a family and having those few special mementoes around that we’ve shared in the past, like anchors in our memories to what’s been most important and will be again. A lot of these turn out to be my son’s December 1st gifts. I pick each one with that in mind and hope they make a lifelong impression.

Anchoring memories like this don’t have to cost much. In my Christmas on Mimosa Lane, little Polly remembers her mother by playing with her mother’s favorite vintage pins, many of which were purchased at tag sales and flea markets. They were special to Polly’s mother, because they were special to her grandmother before her. They were about time spent collecting and enjoying them, not what each pin was worth.

I have a similar tie to my grandmother, and now to my son, who’s kept each of his December 1st gifts in special places, and even as a teenager keeps most of them out year around even though they’re Christmas themed. It’s a little more work to be looking for something Christmas and memorable in November before anyone’s really stocking the “good” stuff yet. But it’s worth it. It’s so worth it.

Think about it this year. Make your first special holiday memory long before the wrapping is ripped off Christmas morning. Make it a tradition that lasts and lasts. Make it a forever, anchor thing you’ll always have with you, twelve months out of the year.

Related Holiday Posts:

Hope for the Holidays
The BEST Holiday Memories Are Made From the Darnedest Things
Holiday Traditions, Symbols and Themes

Even rough holidays can mean love…

Yep, I wrote a drama as my first holiday novel. NOT inside the box, but then again, neither am I. Why all the angst when readers want bright and shiny over their break? Well, for starters, not all readers insist that everything be perfect at the beginning of a story, even if they are reading romance. Next, this is more women’s fiction than classic romance, and that’s what I want to write, so that’s what I’m writing. And finally (and this is what reader reviews are responding to most strongly so far),a lot of people have rough holidays, and I’ve been there, and when I was I was searching for realistic stories similar to my troubles that ALSO had happing, uplifting, promising endings that helped me believe I would, too.

I do love stories that take me to an escaping place where all is bright and shiny. I love visiting those worlds. But my world wants more of what feels real, than it does of what feels like Disneyland. So I often gravitate to deeper themes in my writing and reading time, I think because I want to explore how to find love in those places, and hope and faith and trust.

Dark passages are just a journey to more light, I keep reminding myself (and hopefully my readers). So we go down some tough roads. They’re only seques to better places than we’re leaving behind. Even if those tough places are holidays, as they are for many of us.

Because there’s always love. There’s always that place inside that longs to connect and believe you belong. Holidays make us want that more, I think, and maybe they help us try harder if we’re paying attention. What will your holiday spirit be this year: change and growth and meaning more to others and yourself; or longing for what you don’t have or what’s now lost to holiday’s past?

There’s always love, even when everyone else’s happiness seems unreachable for you, and sadness wants to own your holiday. Fight that instinct. Fight for your happy ending. Read and see and do whatever you need to, to believe that your heart can thrive and overcome.

I’ve lost a loved one close to the holidays. That experience scarred me in ways that will never go away, as similar hard times affect my COML characters in deep, undeniable, un-Disneyland ways. But while I’ll remember that difficult time in my life this year, like every Christmas since it happened, that won’t be the spririt I celebrate this holiday. I will give and allow myself to receive. I will love and feel the bounty still in my life. I will feel grateful for all that I have, and do my best to honor those blessings instead of giving them up because I feel too tied still to what I’ve lost.

And I will continue to write characters who do the same and search for readers who love them.

Join me, won’t you?

Holiday Traditions and Symbols and Memories…

What makes your holiday come alive? Cooking? Celebrating? Gift-giving and receiving? Sports? Shopping? Or is it the memories of doing and experiencing and enjoying all of these things with loved ones and friends in the past…

Remembering anchors so much of who we were to who we are and want to be. Often, we want for things to have been better than they were or for them to become better than they are. But the best memories, the ones that define a time and place or person we’ve loved, can become the symbol of everything we want to achieve again. These kinds of traditions in place and time and relationships tend to come to us most strongly around the holidays.

I believe this so strongly, I naturally wrote a book about it. The book itself was alive long before I wrapped a holiday theme around it. But it was the holiday symbolism I added, complete with past images merging with the present and promising a better future, that made the characters and their story come to life in a way I’d never dreamed.

There’s promise in the past, even if before came with its share of heartache. Searching for the perfect symbols of a bright future (despite disappointments) was my challenge. And yours. All of us could let ourselves become mired in the darker nature memories can hold. Or we can find inspiration there, to want what we once had, or maybe what we’ve never had but still desire.

I challenged my characters (and I challenge you) to see life as an abundance always sought for, even if we feel deprived. A success just beyond our reach that we CAN attain, even if we’ve failed. A reality that will be ours, even if it’s alluded us for too long.

In Christmas on Mimosa Lane, I use colors and dreams and make-believe children’s stories and vintage jewelry to tie past and present and future together into a tapestry our protagonist, the little girl she’s trying to save and the struggling single father she’s falling in love with can see and touch and unravel until they understand their heart’s desire.

What do you need to experience or remember or relive this holiday season, so you, too, can reach for what you most long for and grasp it for your very own? I’d love to know. Just sound off in the comments. I’ll be listening…

And to continue (and share ;o) my obsession this season with holiday traditions and symbols and memories:

I’m adding images of some of my favorite Trifari vintage pins (one of the things Mallory and little Polly share in COML) out on my Pinterest page. Check these lovelies out!
Plus,  don’t forget that through the end of November, you can enter to win a vintage  Rudolf  Trifari pin of your own, complete with a cute red nose, by sharing a holiday memory or collection in the comments over at that blog post.
Stay tuned… I’ll be giving away a vintage Trifari Christmas tree in much the same way. Post to come very soon and run through the middle of December, so your tree will make its way to you before the holiday gets here!

Happy remembering and dreaming, everyone!

How We Write: Drafting freedom

So you’re in the middle of NANOWRIMO and typing words and pages every day until your fingers fall off and your brain short circuits. But what are you creating? Is it anything you’ll keep once December arrives? Drafting with creative freedom is key in this sort of challenge, but creating with purpose is the linchpin to your success.

Write without constraint, yes. As I said in last week’s How We Write post, draft without clinging too tightly to planning or expectation. BUT you have to revise every rough word you draft. And you don’t ant to have written yourself into so many dark corners and black holes that a finished novel that you can sell will be impossible to carve out of your draft.

How do you lay the groundwork for the “rework” you know needs to be done, while you’re giving your story the creative freedom it needs to come to life?

Me? Remember that I’m a geeky, techno-loving girl who while drafting must continually slap my hand and let go of the overly organized stuff that enables the more analytical side of my brain. So nix on the forms and charts for me. But keeping track of changes I see coming and new things I draft into the story on the fly is my thing. Being analytical while I create is crucial, without allowing the right side of my brain to interrupt the left’s mad dash toward a draft’s finish line.

I’m in the midst of writing Sweet Summer Sunrise, the next book in my Seasons of The Heart series for Montlake, and I’m crashing things as usual on a pretty tight deadline. Layered, emotional, complex things. Four points of view–one of them a child. Community. Romance. Psychological and relationship realism that’s more valuable to me than all the rest. At least three subplots going on at once, and that’s just the external stuff. Internal journeys are even more sensitive to overwriting and wandering, because you have to be subtle about how you share a character’s journey so the reader doesn’t feel beaten over the head with it.

Of course there will be mistakes in my rough draft. I have to learn to accept that and again, as I said in last week, allow myself to write crap for a while so the better stuff will flow, too. A mistake I can always do something about later. An empty page, not so much.

My reality is that the whole package of what I’m writing is too complicated a thing to come together in a single draft.

Yet I need that first draft, so I have something I can revise and refine and rework until the story I’m dying to tell takes shape. So how do I keep up with everything I want to do, but am not quite doing yet, as I draft–without break the delicate flow of my creativity of these first words on paper?

Let me me say from the start that I use Microsoft Word to keep up with everything I’m learning as I draft a story in Microsoft Word. If you’re working with other platforms or systems, I’m sure you’ll be able to follow along, too.

Using the Word’s “Notes” toolbar/feature, which enables you to leave notes you can easily track and keep up with, here’s the basics of my odd little process:

 Whenever I recognize a change that needs to be made in something I’ve already written, I leave a note where the change first needs to be implemented. I DON’T make the change, just the note.
When I introduce something completely new into the story (a new character, unexpected scene, different detail or symbol or mannerism, etc.), I note where it first begins and from where it needs to be worked into the story, then move on.
When I’m writing something I know is key but can’t get my head around exactly how to use it most effectively, I note that, too. Almost like leaving myself a marker–”Don’t forget to come back and explore this more. Work on this as you write forward, then come back and clean the cr**p up here!”
I even use these notes to indicate where I’ve dramatically changed turning points and so forth that I’d planned to hit but as I draft have realized don’t work the way I’d thought they wold. These are kind of road signs showing where I chose to take a new path and why. That way, when it’s time to rewrite and I go back to my planning documents to see how best to focus my rewriting efforts, I have a history of what I was thinking while I drafted and why I chose to write in the new directions I have.

I don’t mean to make this kind of analysis, “while I’m not allowed to be analytical,” seem overly simplistic. It’s not. It’s really, really not.

Pulling together story, good story, is always a complex juggling act, no matter how many times you may have succeeded at it in the past. No matter what anyone tells you or what the world thinks of what we do when we’re all alone with our computers and notepads and dreams…

The complexity of what I do, I think, comes from compartmentalizing the notes/makers I  leave in my wake while I plug into the unrestrained creative part of me from which stories bloom. Discussing my process usually evolved into a lively couple of hours when I’m teaching rewriting during a weekend retreat. My brain’s that off-centre, I guess ;o)

You might need more or less of all of this to feel comfortable enough to draft free. We’re all different.

That’s the point of HoWW. Listen to what I do, watch others, then figure out your own process and how best to improve how YOU write. So YOU can draft better and more productively and have what you need to rewrite something brilliant from those rough first words.

Then let us know how you’re doing in the comments. I’ll be cheering you on ;o)

Other Drafting Posts

Draft Writing, the beginning…

Recent Rewriting Discussions

Rewriting Intro: scratching the surface…
Deconstructing BEFORE Rewriting: no more excuses…
Rewriting Techniques

The Soul of the Matter: “To comprehend a nector requires sorest need…”

Sometimes we need a kick in the pants to wake us up to everything we’re taking for granted. Too often, it’s what we “need” that we see most clearly, or what we think is being denied us or what we don’t think we’ll ever have. It’s the comprehending that we’re missing with the rest of our lives. The seeing most clearly what is ours or could be or wants to be, only we neglect the beauty of what is, in preference for the potential of what might be.

It doesn’t have to be fancy, to catch our eye. What matters simply has to be our obsession, and once it becomes that we can’t look away. It’s true for what we covet, and it can be true for what we have as well.

I often times (read: always) write about characters that can’t see their “nows” because they’re too fixated on what’s missing from their past and what they think the need in their futures.My first novel’s working title was Forever Ago, and it was the very first time I put down on paper my personal philosophy that a person must reach back to before and deal with what’s been most avoided their entire lives, before what she’s meant to be can flourish as she lives forward. I think I’ve been writing about that same dynamic my entire career, in one way or another.

But with recent projects, particularly with Christmas on Mimosa Lane, it’s the impact of our inability to appreciate what we’ve made for ourselves in the now that fascinates me. We’re on a path now. We’re living now. We have so much NOW. Why is it so difficult most days to live here, in the present? Why is that path hardly ever something that we appreciate–until it’s threatened and becomes our obsessions only when we might lose it?

I selected the above quote from Emily Dickinson to head one of my chapters, because my protagonist is in just that place. And because I believe most of us are. We see what we feel we need to conquer. We see what’s causing us the most anxiety or pain or fear. Why, WHY don’t we also see what’s sitting right before us, waiting for us to treasure it, as ours–until it’s practically too late?

Success is counted sweetest

By those who ne’er succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires the sorest need.

Fame and success and lacking and lusting for more are themes in Dickenson’s poetry. Since I’ve been obsessed with her work since childhood, it’s not a mystery that the same emotional journeys run strongly through my novels and characters.And at a glance, you might say this poem and much of my writing deals with failure. Or does it tackle the truth behind what it really means to find success?

COML and all my books about about choosing to be happy and safe and secure, wherever we are. Needing where we are more than we let ourselves lust for the success we’ll never have or the need we’ll never fulfill.And keep in mind, I’m a competitive, Type-A personality who will always be driven to fight and work my ass off and succeed. That will never change, and I wouldn’t want it to. But I do want, for myself and my family and friends and readers, the capacity to enjoy what’s already been achieved. To revel in the now we’ve captured for ourselves. To want and be grateful for want is, which can too easily be impossible of all we’re focused on is the past or the future and never on this place where we find ourselves in this moment. This new beginning–the theme I chose when I selected my author logo: a butterfly (the eternal symbol of metamorphosis and new beginnings).

As I write this, Christmas on Mimosa Lane is selling in a wildly successful way that’s quite frankly freaking me out. AND I’m writing it’s sequel, which will be out next summer. It would be so easy to see this latest upswing in my career as a coincidence or something to fear that I’ll never be able to repeat. Or, I could find joy in this moment, in this journey and path I’m on, and fall in love all over again with my Mimosa Lane characters and the new adventure we’re embarking on as I write forward.

The choice is mine.

The choice is yours.

What will we count sweetest today. What will be the nectar we understand best: what we’ve achieved, or what we’ll never, ever have?

Shiny days…

Some days are built for staring at the shine of the unexpectedly magnificant, as it casts its perfection on your life.

Today is one of those days for me. Christmas on Mimosa Lane is selling far and beyond anyone’s expectations, hitting too many Amazon best seller lists to count. And it’s only the first full week in November. And today it’s being spotlighted not only on Kindle’s Daily Blog, but also Fresh Fiction.

It’s one of those days, even when I have another book to write, where I’m going to sit back and take in the gold and diamonds reflecting off the water beyond my window and remind myself of just how lucky I am to be a writer and to have found readers out there in the ether who take my words in, give them a warm, loving place to thrive, and hopefully enjoy just a bit of what I wanted them to see.

So, be kind to this shiny-struck author and leave a comment on the Kindle Blog, so my editors thing someone’s listening ;o)

And go win a $10 Amazon gift certificate on Fresh Fiction.

And please, Please, PLEASE, take in a bit of the sparkle that is your day!

Other opportunities to win:

Fresh Fiction Christmas on Mimosa Lane November contest
WIN a Vintage Trifari Rudolf of your very own this holiday season, like the jewelry my characters obsess about in COML!

How We Write: Draft Writing, the beginning…

NANOWRIMO… Write a book in a month… Easy, right? NOT.

How about we just talk about writing every day for a week, for those of us who have trouble with the grand scope of NANO. One day at a time for seven days, how will you draft every day–with PURPOSE–so that by the end of a week you’re motivated and enthusiastic and encouraged enough to go for another week. Screw the month-long pressure of being finished with a completed novel?

I teach draft writing, even though it’s my downfall. I’m currently drafting a new book and it’s driving me CRAZY because I don’t like not knowing what’s going to happen next. But I can’t know, not for certain no matter how much I plan what I’m going to do, until I draft the darn thing.

So why all the drama?

Frailty, they name is woman???

No, I’m just a perfectionist who doesn’t feel good when what’s coming out of my mind rough isn’t the golden, beautiful thing I want it to be yet. I have to give myself permission to write crap for a while, in order to have something that I can polish later. Shudder. Not my happy place, but this week I’m going to dive in and rough stuff out regardless.

Join me, won’t you?

Here’s the plan:

Write into a new story or book every day. EVERY day. Not thinking about it every day. WRITING it every day.
Don’t get up from your computer until your daily progress is done. Finished. DONE. No exceptions.
Don’t buy into the excuse that you can’t, because it’s too hard. It’s supposed to be hard, especially when you’re distracted or afraid or worried or mired in some other details of your life.
Don’t think you’re alone. I’m right there with you. If I can deal with it, you can. So, deal with it ;o)

And you know I wouldn’t leave you floundering without some, hopefully, helpful suggestions to keep you writing, right?

Here are a few techniques that inspire me when I’m “improvising” new pages: 

Get that first sentence out. Make it amazing. Let it surprise and inspire you. Share it with your writing buddies, then write the NEXT sentence, and then the next… Each new idea will be easier, once you’ve tuned into your momentum.
Set a timer for 10 minutes and free write without stopping or allowing any distraction of any kind.  You’ll amaze yourself, how much you can get done.
Hook up with a small group and form a 30-minute, impromptu challenge that gets you all going at the same time, then all sharing your results. The enthusiasm is priceless.
Write a scene out of sequence. One you know will come later in the story/novel, that you’re no where near yet in the linear progression of the story. Write that exciting, thrilling moment you can’t wait to sink your teeth into, and see if it doesn’t inspire you to get back to where you were earlier and drive the story forward.
Write in a new point of view. One you haven’t tried in this story yet. Free write anything within the world of the story/book from this new person’s perspective to challenge you to see things in a different way.
Write the next scene in a different tense (shift from third to first, or from first person past to first person present, or to omniscient/narrative). Tell the story a different way, while you write the next sequential thing happening in the flow of your narrative. For many of us, this will be our true voice breaking through and showing us what we might be missing.

You’ll find your own way, once you lock into a process that works for you. And remember, this isn’t my zen, either. But it IS a critical part of every writer’s job–getting down to business, even if you’ll never be completely ready for it, and getting the words onto the page that will suprise and inspire you…so that you can come back later, if needed, and clean everything up.

More about drafting next week, so please come back.

And if you’re feeling light headed at the though of having to rewrite all that you’re drafting, look back at the last few weeks of How We Write for some pointers on how you can make that part of your process work, too:

Rewriting Intro: scratching the surface…
Deconstructing BEFORE Rewriting: no more excuses…
Rewriting Techniques

And later in November/December, let’s get together in How We Write and talk planning. Seriously, my FAVORITE thing ;o)

The Soul of the Matter: “It is good we are dreaming…”

I love Emily Dickinson’s succinct word choices. Because of them her poetry can mean exactly what it says, or a world of other things can bloom from her writing depending on the reader’s state of mind. It inspires me that she reportedly spent days, weeks, months, even years choosing and re-selecting just the right words to convey emotion and sentiment and life into her poetry.

There are those who don’t connect as much to the darker themes that flowed from her creativity. Some find her approach jerky and caustic and truncated before full understanding can evolve from the images she conjures. Particularly in a poem like this “dream” one I selected a phrase or two to set off a particularly turbulent moment in Christmas on Mimosa Lane. But for me, it’s forever magical each time I dive in:

We dream—it is good we are dreaming—
It would hurt us—were we awake—
But since it is playing—kill us,
And we are playing—shriek—

Granted she loves herself some punctuation, and I’m a writer who would avoid all em dashes and colons and semi-colons in my work if I could. But I don’t think it’s as simple as her trying to enforce the rhythm she wants the reader to follow. I see a broader brilliance in what she’s doing. An encapsulation of theme and purpose, allowing us to take away small bursts of understanding, even if we don’t continue to read the rest of what she offers.

It IS good we are dreaming.

Dreams can protect us from reality. We all dream and wish we didn’t have to wake. And shouldn’t the goal be to play and shriek and face what we fear might kill us, in those places we go to in our dreaming minds?

Where else would it safe (good) enough to deal with all that we need to, in the hopes of understanding ourselves enough once we return to avoid the very things we feel threatened by?

I’ll share just one more stanza from this poem to give you a better idea of why I selected a few snippets from it for COML:

What harm? Men die—externally—
It is a truth—of Blood—
But we—are dying in Drama—
And Drama—is never dead—

This is a kind of reversal for me, where she takes the very safety of the dreams that protect us, turns them on their ears, and begins to show us the harm of ONLY living in dreams.

Which is the theme and point of using this poem in my Christmas story. Our heroine, Mallory, is dealing with haunting dreams of her past. But are the memories only in her past? Or is she perpetuating the beginning that shaped/warped her, amidst the very present she’s wanting to create light years away from her damaged beginnings?

We create our own drama, ED seems to be saying here.

Do we only get hurt in reality? Or perhaps the deepest cuts are the ones we give ourselves by staying backwards (or inward) reflecting on the drama of the dreams we dream and the lives we’ve lived, instead of truly existing where the truth could hurt, yes, but it could also move us forward.

I write a lot about going back and dealing with your past so you can live fully in the present and have the happily ever after future/ending a romance novel promises a protagonist (and a reader ;o). I sense the same intent each time I re-read so many of her poems.

We have to work on both planes (deal with both who we were AND who we’re becoming, just as Mallory does in Christmas on Mimosa Lane), in order to leave the drama behind and capture the peace and safety within ourselves we’re all searching for…

Other Soul of the Matter posts discussing Emily Dickinson’s poetry:

Hope is the thing with feathers…
Not knowing when the dawn will come…

The Best of North Georgia: Eating…

Yes, I’m gluten-free and I have to watch my sugar intake and my thyroid makes it difficult for me to feel hungry at all sometimes, but this southern girl knows good eatin’. And when you’re in the mood for it, there’s nothing like the the flavors and variety of Georgia cooking. Top of the list? One of my favorite mountain meal destinations–The Dillard House.

Keep in mind I grew up in a family that was half-full of farm people. When I say that The Dillard House’s fresh veggies and southern-prepared casseroles are the best EVER, I know of which I rave. And while I’m not much into animal protien, I’ve always on the prowl  for meat options that hearken to yester-memories. And there’s something for everyone at this special slice of heaven on earth. Take a look at a typicl menu.

They serve family style–bringing platters of food to your table for everyone to pass and share. Second helpings a must of whatever is fresh and in season and amazingly well prepared. But even with their “down home cooking at it’s best” (and I wouldn’t say it’s always the most healthy eating, but if it’s only a once-in-a-while treat, what could it hurt, right?), The Dillard House is so much more.

It’s also a destination/inn with hote-like rooms as well as cabins. They do events and group reservations and they’re in one of the most beautiful parts of the North Georgia Mountians. It’s something to see and feel and breathe in and take home with you and be dying to come back to. Look at one of the views…

I’ll write this special place into a book some day, one of my Seasons of The Heart novels to be certain. Everyone I’ve brought here has been dying to come back. There’s a touch of magic in what they create.

You should get you some of this.

You really should!

Don’t miss other Best of North Georgia  selections:

Getaways

Jewelry

Pottery