Anna Sheehan
To tell of myself:
As Walt Whitman said, "I am large, I contain multitudes!" The epigraph of every writer, really.
I was conceived in northern Alaska, and was born to a bohemian veterinarian mother in a hospital on the shores of Lake Michigan. I endured numerous hellish years of school, and I can say with reasonable veracity that I have forgiven all my teachers and even the poor children who had to figure out how to deal with me.
Instead of a social life, I swam in books. I became a devoted follower of Diana Wynne Jones and Douglas Adams. I studied acting and Shakespeare with the Young Shakespeare Players of Madison, Wisconsin, and it deeply impacted my direction in life. I then discovered historical re-enactment, where I hung about in velvet, idly strumming a harp while men in plastic armor hit each other with sticks. That too was most enlightening.
Despite collecting a technical degree in commercial goldsmithing, I instead pursued writing as my primary means of unemployment. I moved with my family to a tiny ranch in rural Oregon, where I still live with my daughter, my mother, and assorted Irish Wolfhounds.
“Now I have a question," Otto wrote. "Fire away.""What do you see in him?""Apart from the obvious?""What’s the obvious? I’m afraid I’m not a teenage girl.”
“I smiled. I was starting to like being called Briar Rose.”
“Did you know I blush purple? Jamal’s teasing me about it.""Is he reading this?" I asked, horrified. "No.""Sorry I made you blush.""I’m not. Good night, Briar Rose.""Good night, blue-skinned alien.”
“Bren's eyes always drew me, until I found myself drawing them.”
“I haven't finished revisiting Sleeping Beauty. As a faerie tale, that one is rife with inherent difficulties. After all, the world doesn't stop just because one person is asleep.”
“A fierce hand gripped my chest, squeezing my lungs. No. it wasn't my lungs. It was my heart. It was breaking.Wasn't I stronger than this?”
“I can't think about him, but I can't forget him, either. It's not right to forget someone you love.”
“What we have is what it is, and all I want it to be...for now”
“I am free. I am haunted. But if nothing else, I am wide awake.”
“I didn't want the sun to rise. I didn't want the world to continue turning. I wanted the whole planet put into stasis until I could catch up.”