The House Blog Tour – Win a FREE Kindle!

About the Book

On receiving the very thing she wants—a divorce and the power to sell their house—over which they have fought the past year—Anna Manning learns that Edward, her soon-to-be ex-husband is dying from cancer.

A faithful wife for three decades, and stay-at-home mother of four children, Anna endured Edward’s constant absence due to travel for his international real estate firm and numerous extra-marital affairs. With their children now adults, Edward has less than six months, possibly three, to live.

Anna takes him home to die in the house she has fought so vigorously to sell. But letting go of someone who has caused so much pain in your life doesn’t come easily. Edward has changed. There are Anna and Edward’s four children, three of whom who are married and struggling to endow their families with meaning and purpose.

News of Edward’s terminal illness provokes her to understand the present, rooted in a wellspring of the past and pouring into a future without him.

The House shows what happens when one adopts the belief that: All hold regret and are seeking forgiveness. Our salvation rests in the hands of others—most particularly the ones we love, and who have treated us wrongly.

Purchase the Book Online at: http://www.anjuellefloyd.com/books/the-house

Read at the bottom of this post for details about how to win a FREE Wi-Fi Kindle ($139 value).

 

About the Author

Anjuelle Floyd is a wife of twenty-eight years, mother of three, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist specializing in mother-daughter relations and dream work.

 

A graduate of Duke University, she received her MA in Counseling Psychology from The California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. She has attended the Dominican Institute of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley, California, and received her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, Port Townsend, Washington. She has received certificates of participation from The Hurston-Wright Writers’ Week and The Voices of Our Nations Writing Workshops.

 

A student of Process Painting for the last decade, Anjuelle has participated in The Art of Living Black Exhibitions 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 held at the Richmond Art Center, Richmond, California.

 

Anjuelle facilitates writing groups and provides individual consultation of fiction projects. She also gives talks on The Need for Family, the Writing Process as a Path Toward Self-discovery and Healing.

 

Anjuelle, would you say you are an extrovert or introvert?

 

I’m a mixture of both. Results of the (MBTI) Myers Briggs Type Indicator list me as an INFP

I am an introverted intuitive person with a lot of feelings and I’m open to constantly taking in information. “Who am I and where’s my life going today?” is a great way to describe the question I seek to answer each day upon waking up. I also have a saying, that I use a lot with my husband. At then end of every day he greets me with, “So how was your day? or better yet, “How are you doing?”

 

My response, undoubtedly is nearly always, “You know not to ask a therapist (psychotherapist) how she’s doing unless you have a long time to sit and listen.” He always chuckles, as do I. He usually asks me this when we’re on our way out to eat. And as usual I answer his questions at dinner, but only after I have queried him about his day. My husband is a surgeon. His work is quite different from that of an author and psychotherapist. But a doctor’s office, much like that of a hospital, also contains much drama. Some of it is rather sad and somber, but some also humorous. So I like listening. It’s hard for me to discuss myself. I’m more comfortable listening. I suppose that’s why I became a psychotherapist and the Myers Briggs types me as an Intuitive Feeler.

 

Much of the information I perceive or take in comes to me in the form of intuitive hits, mental images that bring an energy. When I meet someone for the first time, or I’m listening to a person discuss a matter that has affected them or about which they have much or many feelings, I can listen and pick up on what’s really going on with them through the images that arise in mind as I listen. I say that I am clairsentient. In other words, the feelings that arise in my body give rise to images that indicate what is really happening around me or as when listening to another speak or describe an event, what that person was undergoing and feeling.  Over time I have come to trust these images. I acknowledge, often aloud, when responding that I have no physical evidence on which to base what I am saying, “It’s just a feeling. But this is what I’m picking up.”

 

Most people are opening to hearing what I have to say when I preface it that way. It is kind of like the difference between the information an astrology chart delivers about one’s personality versus that of the Tarot cards.

 

Astrology is based on numerical calculations of birth data and longitude and latitude of one’s birth or as with astro-cartography, where they are physically located or going. Tarot, on the other had has everything to do with symbols, what those symbols mean and one’s intuition around the symbols against the canvas of a person’s life.

 

Writing fiction contains aspects of both extroversion and introversion. The writer has an idea for a story. My stories come to me with a hit. A mental image arises, usually of the scene in the novel that comprises the crisis or climax. That is what I am writing towards. Once I have that in place I clarify the dilemma. That forms another mental image. I usually experience the hit due to an external event, an occurrence or incident that I witness that leaves me with a conflict around the event, how I felt about the happening and what I saw or perceived.

 

Of course once your write and revise your book to the point that it is ready for public consumption the writer must then do as I am now. We must promote the work which inherently entails engaging with potential readers and bloggers, telling about yourself, writing interviews such as this present one. It is an external interaction, but for me the basis for doing it, offering my responses to your and the questions of others individuals arises from within. In this way my introversion, the need to look inward and reflect, while engaging with the world, sustains all that I do.

 

Do you like to cook? If so, what are your favorite dishes to cook?

 

I like to cook and used to do a lot of cooking at the outset of our marriage. I married at age 21, upon graduation from college. I immediately moved to Boston, Massachusetts where my husband was completing Harvard Medical School. We remained there for 8 more years while he completed his surgical training at the New England Deaconess and Massachusetts General Hospitals. As required by his training he would stay over at the hospital, not come home, every other night. This included weekends. Essentially his call schedule for 7 and a half years went like this. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Thus I only saw him on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday evenings, Saturday and Sunday all day.

I describe this because I spent a  lot of time alone and with the wives of other residents.

 

We were lucky if our husbands got the days of Thanksgiving or Christmas off. We experienced nothing such as a Thanksgiving vacation or Christmas vacation. They usually came home in around noon of the holiday. To assuage our loneliness we got into cooking. Sometimes we would start cooking at the outset of December and freezing various foods, oftentimes the results of new recipes we were trying out. Anything to keep us busy and give ourselves something to do. We worked outside the home. Our husbands made little money. Our incomes were sorely needed. But coming home to an empty apartment is no fun.

And we did not have children.

Before the birth of our daughter I would have a huge Holiday party during the month of December, usually on a Friday night, and invite all my husband’s friends from medical school who had remained in Boston to do their resident training. I also invited fellow residents who had moved into the area for the purpose of training. The dishes I served consisted of all that I learned to cook not simply that month, but throughout the year. It was my way of sharing what I had done with my husband and his friends and their wives and significant others.

 

At the outset of our marriage I would also prepare meals and take them to the hospital, on china and with silverware and serve my husband dinner. I devised a way to keep the plates warm, wrap them in towers and hold them a picnic basket, while I waited for him to finish up with a patient before eating.

 

Of course all of this changed when, during our 5th year of marriage, I gave birth to our first child.

 

Are you a sports fan? If so, tell us about your favorite sports and/or sports team.

My husband and I spent nearly a decade in Boston, the 1980’s, and with him having graduated the University of North Carolina @ Chapel Hill and growing up with James Worthy, my husband a committed basketball fan, became exceedingly entrenched in the rivalry between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers. In that we now live in California, and that he came from the same town as James Worthy, it goes without saying that my husband was and is an incredible fan of the Los Angeles Lakers.

 

Anyone that knows anything about basketball knows that the Magic Johnson and Larry Bird dominated 1980’s basketball.

 

I, who had played softball during junior high school and one year of high school, learned much from my husband about basketball of which I knew little to nothing. And so I became a Lakers fan. So many times we watched the serious with bated breath, cheering for the Lakers. I remember one weekend after having driven to New York City for the weekend, we listened to the game on the radio hanging onto the sportscaster’s every word and again, rooting for the Lakers.

 

Our time in Boston during the 1980’s was glittered with watching the NBA finals always rooting for Los Angeles, our way of relieving ourselves of the stress of being a young couple living in a hectic city, while we struggled with my husband working extraordinary hours and while we had little to no money. I learned then what sporting events provide fans and attendants of the games.

 

My husband and I experienced much of what we did with Lakers/Celtics games when we watched the 1986 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets. I will never forget the night that the baseball rolled through Bucky Dent’s legs and sealed the win for the Mets. It was great!

 

I now also realize that for my husband the Laker/Celtics rivalry of the NBA held memories and energy reminiscent of the Carolina/Duke rivalry.

And yet I must say that while I graduated Duke University, I met my husband on the first day of my freshman year at the University of North Carolina @ Chapel Hill. I transferred to Duke University once I had accepted his proposal of marriage and decided that I wanted to become a medical technologist and not a pharmacist or doctor as I had once contemplated.

 

Gaining entrance into the medical technology program at UNC Chapel Hill would have required I wait another year. I needed and wanted to graduate in 4 years so we could marry. Acceptance to the medical technology program at Duke University allowed me to complete college in 4 years.

 

Though I am a Duke alumnus, my heart rests with UNC Chapel Hill, because that is where I met my husband who is also my muse. Without him I would not be writing.

 

Are there any other hobbies you wish to share?

 

Presently I spend most of my time writing. When I do allow myself during a free moment to do something different that will often include playing either the cello, or the piano or perhaps painting.

 

I took piano lessons throughout school, 1st grade to high school. I also played the clarinet in the symphonic and marching band as well as the alto clarinet, and trombone. I began cello lessons six years ago when our youngest child started learning cello. The Suzuki Method that she studies to learn cello finds that having a mother or parent learn said instrument with the child is most ideal.

 

Having found the cello a most intriguing musical instrument and being a fan of Baroque and Chamber Music for strings I had always wanted to learn to play the cello. While observing her first cello lesson, our youngest turned back and asked, “Mommy, will you learn to play with me?”

 

On learning of her request, the teacher then stated that she thought that would be great, as Dr. Suzuki preferred that method.

 

I love playing along with our youngest. Our middle child plays violin and I love accompanying her too, on both the piano and the cello.

 

Music like my practice of process painting where I do abstract works deepens my process of self understanding and that of my writing and the process by which I craft stories.

 

During a painting retreat on Big Island in Hawaii, I learned the importance of following to the end a feeling that you experience when creating a piece of art. Feelings drive art. And the practice of art in one media or form extends our knowledge and understanding of other art forms.

 

It is imperative that literary artists, authors and poets study and delve into other art forms.

 

Edith Wharton writes, “To re-present in words is far more difficult, because the relation is so close between model and artist.  The novelist works in the very material out of which the object he is trying to render is made. He must use, to express soul, the signs which soul uses to express itself.  It is relatively easy to separate the artistic vision of an object from its complex and tangled actuality if one has to re-see it in paint or marble or bronze; it is infinitely difficult to render a human mind when one is employing the very word-dust with which thought is formulated.”

 

Engagement with and endeavoring into other forms of art and media helps us better understand that which we are trying to create with words.

 

What movie(s) have you watched recently that you would recommend?

 

Inception–This is a great movie for understanding the relationship between psychology, imagination and the urge to create.

Do you like books being turned into a movie? If so, what is your favorite book-to-movie?

 

Revolutionary Road– I really liked the way the movie remained true the book.

If The House was turned into a movie who would you cast to play your characters?

 

I have never considered this question concerning any of my novels or stories, but I had the greatest most fun answering it. It helped me to see my characters more deeply.

 

Thanks so much for asking the question.

 

I am eager to hear what readers think of my choices.

 

• Anna–Angela Bassett
• Edward–Delroy Lindo
• Inman–Denzel Washington
• David–Michael Ealy
• Heather–Thora Birch
• Linda– Kerry Washington
• Brad–Boris Kodjoe
• Serine–Tatiana Ali
• Theo–Chiwetel Ejiofor
• Millicent–Gabrielle Union
• Bryce–Shemar Moore
• Father Richard–Thom Barry

Which social networks do you enjoy the most?

 

Goodreads and Facebook have provided me with some great connections.

And of course my blog, anjuellefloyd.com

 

 

What’s next for you?

I am presently in the middle of the 8th revision of a novel I wrote in 2001, entitled Seasons. I have also begun writing my novel, yet untitled, for this year, 2010. I aim to write a novel each year during the fall. On completion of that first draft, I lay it aside and begin revising the novel I wrote either the previous year or as in this case the one I wrote in 2001.

My novel, Seasons revolves around Sahel Ohin Denning. The novel chronicles, for one year, the plight of a woman who has lost her sight and how her efforts to help a man dying of AIDS assist her in adjusting to her blindness and gaining new perspective and insight on her husband and herself.

KINDLE GIVEAWAY–WIN A FREE KINDLE!

To celebrate the release of her novel, The House, author Anjuelle Floyd is offering a (1) Kindle Wi-Fi (retail value: $139.00) as a part of her promotional blog tour. A WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED DECEMBER 1, 2010.

TO REGISTER ONLINE – http://bit.ly/TheHouseKindleGiveaway

For More Information

• Visit the author online at http://www.anjuellefloyd.com
• View the blog tour schedule at http://bit.ly/TheHouseBlogTour

 

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