Birthday Bash Day 7 - Amy Lane

So at the Coastal Magic Convention, I was originally supposed to eat breakfast the first day with an author who was unable to make it. I was a bit clueless since I was a newbie to conventions, plus I hadn’t checked in the night before. I was looking for help, when lo and behold, I met Amy Lane and promptly fangirled out on her. Needless to say, she was wonderful, and invited me to share breakfast with her and some other wonderful women. She helped decrease my nerves, and I had a blast getting to know her. So, here she is ladies and gentlemen, the amazing Amy Lane!

You’re How Old?

My family has always done birthdays pretty big.  In fact, as the younger children have grown, Mate and I have made a special effort to make their birthdays smaller than the older children’s—it always seemed that the anticipation outweighed the experience, and the letdown always felt so tragic.  I have a crystal clear memory of Big T, as a five year old, weeping over a destroyed piñata.  This is a memory I hesitate to replicate, let me tell you.

Not only that, but as a whole, my children aren’t particularly gregarious.  They have a few trusted friends, and this makes them happy—their family is really the most important peer group they have.  While this makes for a simpler, happier life, it does sort of put a kibosh on the whole “Happy kid at the head of a table of adoring peers” vision of the birthday, so, well, smaller is better, and we’re a tad less upset about cleaning the house.  In all, it’s a win!

But that doesn’t mean that Mate and I don’t have our own little sniffly moments during the celebrations. They grow up so fast—and I know it’s a cliché, but it’s a truth too.  I’ve been blogging for nearly eight years now—I have documented my children’s growth in that time in their stories and pictures, and if I ever want to spend a verklempt hour or two, all I have to do is walk down that electronic Memory Lane, and there I am, when my big kids were in middle school and my little kids were in diapers, and I was the most important person in their lives.

Mate, Squish, Zoomboy, and Zoomboy's bestie,
 all going to the zoo for Zoomboy's birthday.

But time marches on, and, eventually, even my mommy-dependent children will march out of my house and on to their other lives, and it will be me and Mate, left alone in the house together, and it will be simply our birthday again.

Did you hear me say “our”?  Yes—because I am exactly twenty-six hours older than my Mate.  His birthday is October 1st and mine is September 30th and we have always had great fun celebrating our birthdays together.  In fact, friends and family ask about our age together.  “Wait—you’re how old?”

Recently, I heard Mate give two very different, and very erroneous answers to this question.  We both turned 46 this last fall, and in August, at the same wedding, we were asked, “How old are you going to be?”

To the first person, he replied, “Forty-seven.”  To which I smacked him on the arm and corrected him with emphasis.  To the second (apparently chastised) he replied, “Forty-three.”

“Oh my God!  You can’t even remember how old we are!”

“Well I keep forgetting we turned forty!  Everything after that is a blur!”

I laughed, long and hard, because honestly?  That’s the kind of answer you want to hear from the man you’re going to spend the rest of your life with.  Some day, the little ones are going to be out of the house (Heart. Breaking.) and it’s going to be just him and me, looking at each other, entertaining the holy crap out of ourselves.  I understand from other empty nesters that there shall be lots of sex involved—I’m looking forward to it.

And then, there will be the day, when we go, “Oh, hey—our birthdays are this weekend.  How old are we again?”

“Oh fuck it!  I don’t know—it’s all gone by so fast I don’t give a shit!”

“Awesome!  Happy birthday—let’s go see a movie and go out to dinner with the kids.”

And it will be okay—because how ever old we are at that moment, that’s how old we are together.  And just like our kids, we won’t need the giant table where we preside as matriarch and patriarch.  We’ll just need what we’ve always needed:

Our family, and each other.

Description:

Dawson Barnes recognizes his world is very small and very charmed. Running his community college theater like a petty god, he and his best friend, Benji know they'll succeed as stage techs after graduation. His father adores him, Benji would die for him, and Dawson never doubted the safety net of his family, even when life hit him below the belt.

But nothing prepared him for falling on Jared Emory's head.

Aloof dance superstar Jared is a sweet, vulnerable man and Dawson's life suits him like a fitted ballet slipper. They forge a long-distance romance from their love of the theater and the magic of Denny's. At first it's perfect: Dawson gets periodic visits and nookie from a gorgeous man who “gets” him—and Jared gets respite from the ultra-competitive world of dancing that almost consumed him.

That is until Jared shows up sick and desperate and Dawson finally sees the distance between them concealed painful things Jared kept inside. If he doesn’t grow up—and fast—his "superstar" might not survive his own weaknesses. That would be a shame, because the real, fragile Jared that Dawson sees behind the curtain is the person he can see spending his life with.

Amy is giving away an e-copy of Behind the Curtain to one lucky, randomly drawn winner. So just leave a comment with your email to enter! Plus, don't forget to enter the grand prize giveaway here.

Author Bio:

Amy Lane has four children, two cats, a love starved Chi-who-what, a crumbling mortgage and an indulgent spouse. She also has too damned much yarn, a penchant for action adventure movies, and a need to know that somewhere in all the pain is a story of Wuv, Twu Wuv, which she continues to believe in to this day! She writes fantasy, urban fantasy, and m/m romance--and if you give her enough diet coke and chocolate, she'll bore you to tears with why those three genres go together. She'll also tell you that sacrifices, large and small, are worth the urge to write.