My last few posts for Babble

I know I mentioned a while back that I'm writing for Babble about, well, writing--but if I was a good person and blog-contributor I'd be updating you whenever I have a new post over there. Turns out I am the worst. Here are my last three posts:

The thrilling, depressing, but ultimately triumphant story of how we got our book published.

Sometimes two authors jabbering about their writing habits can make you want to give up and die. Or maybe that's just me?

I liked these articles about writing. You will like them, too.  

We're leaving today to visit family. I will be gone all week and intend to stay offline the whole time, but we'll see how that pans out. (Sometimes Mama gets the shakes and needs her Twittertime.) I'm bringing my sketchbook and will be attempting to draw my niece and nephew with Henry while taking breaks between cuddle time (my idea) and endless rounds of hide-and-seek (theirs).

We return home just in time for my grand jury duty! I can live-blog grand jury duty, right?

You need to be alive in order to make stuff

I wrote a post about writers and depression over at Babble. Here's an excerpt:

There has long been this notion that in order to be a writer or artist, you should also be an emotional car wreck. That–whether you struggle with addiction, depression, anxiety, psychosis, or a heady mélange of all of the above–your demons are somehow part and parcel of your identity as an Artist. With this in mind, too many talented writers and artists have gone and drank themselves to death or allowed their illnesses free reign, because it was more important to serve the Muse than live a rich, full, happy life, and there was certainly no way to do both.

This is a steaming pile of horseshit.

Come on over and tell me what you think, won't you? Thank you, I love you, more soon when I'm done wrapping these eleventy billion gifts.

I have a new blog!

I'm so excited about this one. When Catherine asked me to contribute something to this new thing at Babble she was doing, my first inclination was to decline, because I'm sort of done writing about parenting. I mean, I'm still going to talk about being a parent, but the "look at this cute thing my kid said" material is no longer mine to share. My last gig, they wanted me to do that and pretty much nothing but that, and I just--I can't, anymore. My son is almost 9 and he (rightly) wants his privacy. So there it is. Besides, what little we decide that I can share with you, I'm going to save for Finslippy. Finding anything to share with another parenting site would be challenging, to say the least.

But then we talked, and it turned out she didn't need me to share cute relatable Henry stories, after all. I could write about anything. I knew that I wanted to talk about writing, and fear. The fear that keeps us from doing the writing that (many of us) need to do to stay sane. I think about this stuff all the time, I've covered it before on this blog, Eden and I did a panel on the topic for the Mom 2.0 conference, and I still have things to say. So why not make it the subject of my blog?

So here it is. Write Anyway, my new blog, part of Babble Voices.  I'll be writing once a week, and I already have these two posts up: Who do I think I am?  and Why "Write anyway"? I hope you'll take a look.

Update on August 21, 2011 by Alice

Hello again! To those of you who have asked for information on the RSS feed, the URL is this:

http://blogs.babble.com/babble-voices/alice-bradley-write-anyway/feed/

Thanks, and I'm so glad you're as excited as I am!

It's here!

Our book is out in the world, as of yesterday. Our baby! Be gentle with it, friends and strangers!

I'm overwhelmed by all the positive feedback we've received so far. First of all, check out the glowing review in Kirkus Reviews. If there was one review I was anticipating with teensy morsel of dread, it was Kirkus. They don't pull any punches over there. And with humor, who knows? We could have caught a reviewer on a bad day. I've already written every scathing review in my mind. I could have handed one over for them to publish. But they liked it! They really liked it!

As nice as that was, it's the congratulations and kind words from fellow bloggers and Twitter friends that really mean a lot to both of us. Here's a rundown of some of the nice mentions we've received so far, and I'm sure I'm leaving someone out, so please forgive me, whoever you are, and know that this is just because I've had three cups of coffee and if you were to peer inside my brain you'd see a chipmunk riding a little stationery bike that's hooked up to a motor that's powering an electronic monkey playing a harpsichord. It's amazing I managed to dress myself this morning, much less string words together all sensible-like.

Maggie at Mighty Girl
Melissa at Suburban Bliss
Zan at A Cup of Tea and a Wheat Penny
Angela at Fluid Pudding
Angella at Dutch Blitz
Mir at Want Not
Megan at Not Martha
Amber at The Amber Show
Danielle at Knotty Yarn
Aimee at Greeblemonkey
Roxana at Everyday Treats
Liz and Kristen at Cool Mom Picks

And I didn't even list all of our tireless cheerleaders on Twitter and Facebook. I can't thank you all enough.

A bunch of the above bloggers are hosting giveaways (I believe Megan even has a gift basket to give away!), and I encourage you to visit their sites, but between you (my beloved reader) and me, if I had my heart's desire, all of you would buy a copy. Today, if possible. We want to generate as much excitement and buzz for the book as we can, and nothing raises the heart rates of our publisher like healthy initial sales.

I won't try to give you the hard sell, here, but I do want to say that this is a humor book, not a pregnancy or parenting guide, and therefore is appropriate for any adult with an appreciation of our kind of humor. It's great for a shower gift, but it's not only for pregnant women. No more so than the Daily Show would only be appropriate for pundits to watch.

The list price is $14.99, and it's available for much less at several sites. Where can you buy it, you may ask? Why, here! And here! And also here! And don't forget here! (The destination for that first link, incidentally, is selling our book at half the list price. I am just saying. For informational purposes.)

I'll be updating this site with more information, including our upcoming tour dates, very soon. (And I will also be updating it with non-book things, when my life resumes something approaching normalcy. Or, at least, you know, what it was.)