I’d like to welcome Ann Charles to the blog for #WriterWednesday!

A few of your favorite summer traditions:

Taking family road trips to see new places, traveling back roads in different states, and enjoying the local food.

Something summer-related that you’ll never do again:

Pick strawberries for money. Unfortunately, that means I’ll also never have “strawberry fights” at the end of a strawberry season where all of the pickers have a big party and then get to gear up in strawberry boxes, mash up handfuls of strawberry “bombs,” and throw them at each other.

Favorite summer treat:

Iced flavored coffee.

A summer treat that makes you gag:

Ceviche

Best summer vacation memory:

Adopting kittens we found along the way from different states and watching our kids have fun playing with them in the car during the long driving days. (We currently have a cat we picked up in Idaho and another from Ohio, and have had other cats from different states in the past.)

A summer vacation disaster that you’d rather forget:

Driving across northern Montana with a pop-up camper trailer that kept falling apart and losing pieces along the way. It was hot and dry and every time we had to stop, the flies would try to eat us for lunch.

Most favorite place to write/edit in the summer:

On our back porch in the early, dry part of summer when there are very few bugs around, relaxing in a warm breeze with one of our cats on a nearby chair, listening to mellow music.

The worst place to try to write in the summer because of all the distractions:

Inside in our living room while the kids are home from school for weeks on end and the cats are acting stir crazy, bouncing off of furniture—and me.

Favorite thing to do on a summer evening:

Sit on the back porch and drink iced tequila with lemon.

Least favorite thing about summer:

Heat and humidity mixed together to form what feels like Hell on Earth.

Favorite place to visit in Virginia: At this time, Interstate 81 because we’ve only driven that route on our way from Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania to Natchitoches, Louisiana for some cracklin’s.

Somewhere you’ve visited way too much. Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt: West of Amarillo on Interstate 40.

The thing you like most about being a writer:

Giving people a fun escape from reality.

The thing you like least about being a writer:

Staring at a blinking cursor on a blank page.

Things you will run to the store for in the middle of the night:

Cat food because my cats think they have to have a full bowl of food waiting for them when I go to bed or they might starve to death by morning, and if that bowl is empty, they will wake me up and let me hear and earful about it.

Things you never put on your shopping list:

Grass seed and a lawn mower. After spending almost 4 hours a week on a riding lawn mower throughout much of my childhood, melting into a pool of sweat in the heat and humidity of a Midwest summer, I have taken a permanent vacation from all lawn-mowing duties.

The thing that you will most remember about your writing life:

How wonderful it feels when a reader takes the time to write and tell me how much fun they had reading my books, how the stories take them away to a happier place during the tough times in their lives, how they had fun sharing the stories with their parent, sibling, friend, and even a stranger who had also read my books.

Something in your writing life that you wish you could do over:

I wish I could spend more of my early writing years putting more energy into improving my craft and my “voice,” and less time into trying to write stories to please agents or editors.

Most daring thing you’ve ever done:

Filed for divorce.

Something you chickened out from doing:

Umm ... well, I try to live my life without putting myself in a precarious situation that will result in me chickening out. For example, I haven’t gone up in a plane out of which I’d potentially parachute because I know without a doubt that I’m too chicken to jump.

About Ann

USA Today Bestselling author, Ann Charles, writes spicy, character-driven stories full of mystery, comedy, adventure, suspense, romance, and supernatural mayhem. When she's not dabbling in fiction, she's arm wrestling with her two kids, attempting to seduce her husband, and arguing with her sassy cats.

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