Can We Love Our Second Children As Much?

One of my very first blogger buddies was Hart Johnson. We have Oregon and writing in common and as I got to know her through comments and blog posts, I realized we also have slightly wacky senses of humor in common too...which is why I'm so excited to have her here today to help celebrate and promote her cozy mystery, The Begonia Bribe. I read The Azalea Assault in, like, a day and I'm setting aside a summer day for The Begonia Bribe too.


So you know how when you have a baby you are clueless? You make tons of mistakes, and are totally paranoid and practice CONSTANT VIGILANCE and every single BEST PRACTICE so your baby will be perfect... or as perfect as it's possible to be, considering you are CLUELESS and trying to parent from a BOOK...

And then you have a second baby, and you figure, I'm an old pro. I've done this before. I've GOT THIS.

And then your second child is totally opposite your first, and the tricks learned the first time don't work. And the advice you'd learned to ignore because it DIDN'T work is now what you need to do... And your first child suffers for lack of attention and jealousy...

It's like that...

While my books in the Garden Society Mystery series were technically written 7th and 9th, they were the first and second published, respectively... And MAN, am I going through second time mom syndrome... I'm all relaxed when I ought to be panicking, totally forgetting certain details... And I'm embarrassed to shout to the world HELLO!!! I know you gave me the FABULOUS gift of love and support a year ago, but I need it again!!! Pretty please! And things that I did and were unnecessary the first time, I skipped and totally should have done this time around... The Begonia Bribe is definitely going to need YEARS of therapy.

And all the while, I can't help comparing my children... the first was so perky and personable... she got right out there in people's faces—on a Barnes and Noble TOWER in the peak book buying month—and I got pictures of her all over the world being held by various friends... This second child seems just a little slow to warm up. I'm not sure what to do about that. Maybe she resents that I didn't eat as carefully or watch my weight as well during my pregnancy.

Erm... okay, so that strains the metaphor a bit...

She's still on a tower... so that's something. But not nearly as many shipped. Oh, I know... it has to do with how many SOLD the first time—they are trying to match better, but I'm worried it will give her an inferiority complex!

And all in all, I ALSO had a much harder time getting this book written... second in a series... how much do I retell? What portion of readers will read the first first so they know already? What portion will read them out of order so I have to watch out for spoilers? Because these are in ORDER, but the murders stand alone... so the only REAL spoilers that matter are who died and who killed them. But those sort of matter, yeah?

I'm not sure why #2 was so hard and then #3 was relatively easy... In fact my beta readers both loved #3 best of the set, but there it is. They also say with parenting: When you have one, you spend all day just gazing at your child. When you have a second, you spend all day watching your first child to make sure they don't hurt your second. When you have a third, you spend all day hiding from your children... so there's that.

Begonia Bribe Blurb Roanoke, Virginia, is home to some of the country’s most exquisite gardens, and it’s Camellia Harris’s job to promote them. But when a pint-sized beauty contest comes to town, someone decides to deliver a final judgment … A beauty pageant for little girls—the Little Miss Begonia Pageant—has decided to hold their event in a Roanoke park. Camellia is called in to help deal with the botanical details, the cute contestants, and their catty mothers. She soon realizes that the drama onstage is nothing compared to the judges row. There’s jealousy, betrayal, and a love triangle involving local newsman—and known lothario—Telly Stevens. And a mysterious saboteur is trying to stop the pageant from happening at all. But the drama turns deadly when Stevens is found dead, poisoned by some sort of plant. With a full flowerbed of potential suspects, Cam needs to dig through the evidence to uproot a killer with a deadly green thumb. Hart (aka, Alyse Carlson) writes books from her bathtub and can be found at Confessions of a Watery Tart, on Facebook (author page, profile), Twitter, or Goodreads. Book links: Amazon, Barnes and Noble