Your questions answered – part 2

I’m back with part two of my question and answer session! It was really a lot of fun to work on both posts, although it took a lot more time and thinking then I thought it would. You guys ask some hard questions!

Ti from Book Chatter asked: Your youngest is still pretty young but do you believe that a love of reading can be cultivated? Or do you believe that you are born with it?

This may come as a shock to most, but I was NOT a reader growing up. My mother was a lifelong book lover and I even remember my older sister reading, but I had very little interest in the written word as a child. My love of reading didn’t come until I was an adult, starting with Stephen King and Ann Rice books. I realized pretty quickly that I was missing out on some good stuff and then began to read on a regular basis. For sure I don’t think I was born with a love of reading. I also don’t have many memories of my parents reading to me, although they both worked hard (mother worked at nights as a waitress and my father had odd hours as a policeman) so I don’t think reading to the kids was up on their priority list – feeding us was more important! 🙂

Since I have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom and my husband is usually home by dinnertime, we have made it a priority to sit down with both of our girls at night to read to them.  My oldest daughter is now an independant reader and I’ve begun to see how much she enjoys sitting down with a book. Is it because she was born with a love of books or the endless hours I spent reading to her since she was a baby? I’m not sure, although there is one thing I can tell you – don’t be like the woman from this post over at The Book Lady’s Blog. For sure she isn’t doing her son any favors.

Chris over at Bookarama asked: How long did the adoption of your little one take? Was there a lot of hoops to jump through?

Currently the wait to adopt from China is REALLY long. Right now from when you receive a log-in-date (i.e. when you paperwork is submitted to the Chinese government) you will have to wait approximately three years to receive a referral. Add that to the fact that it takes about six months or so for your agency to prepare the documents to go to China and you are talking about a very long wait. This time-line fluctuates every few years and in the past there have been families that have received their referrals in a matter of months.

The adoption of my daughter was a little different. Sometimes the Chinese government will expedite a family if one or both of the parents are of Chinese decent. So, when we submitted our dossier to China we asked if we could be expedited since my husband was born and raised in Hong Kong. What that meant was that our total wait time was only a year and a half, which by today’s standards was super fast.  

As far as hoops are concerned, everyone has to submit the exact same dossier – which means we both had to get fingerprinted twice (first on the local, then on the federal level), both of us had to get physicals and we needed to fill out what seemed like endless amounts of paperwork, all of which had to be notarized. It was a logistical nightmare, but the end result was well worth it! 

This next question is from Staci of Life in the Thumb: What are you looking forward to the most at BEA?

I’m really looking forward to a couple things. First, I can’t wait to meet all the bloggers who will be there. It will be so nice to actually shake hands with some of the women I’ve been chatting on-line with for the last few years. If they are anything like Book Club Girl, who I was able to meet for lunch the other day, then I am going to have a lot of fun!

I’m also looking forward to participating in the blogger panel. If you had told me a few months ago that I would be speaking at a major book publishing conference, I would have called you crazy. Now I’m just excited. If you can’t be at BEA but would still like to listen to the panel, then just call into Blog TalkRadio at 347-945-6149 on Saturday, May 30th at 2pm EST to listen to all of us live!

Lastly I really, really want to meet Shannon Hale. I just love Shannon’s books and can’t wait to actually meet her and hopefully get her newest adult novel The Actor and the Housewife signed!

Lastly, this Jersey girl asked: Despite being a jersey girl, can you pump your own gasoline?

Well Natalie, I was born and raised here in New Jersey, so am completely spoiled by the fact that I’m not allowed to pump my own gas here in the Garden State. Which means the last time I had to pump my own gas was on a long car ride when I helped my girlfriend move down to Florida to start college. It’s been many years since then, so NO, I don’t actually know how to pump my own gas! How about you?

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