Here are twelve secrets about Anita Higman—twelve facts you might enjoy reading or twelve facts that might be a complete waste of your time. I’ll leave that up to you…

1. I think writing is incredibly hard. When I start a new book, it seems impossible. It is impossible! But somehow word by word it gets gone. Just like when kids are born, each completed book seems like a miracle.
2. I once worked in a pillow factory. I was terrible at it. I got so weary with the repetition I started yakking with the woman next to me. We got reprimanded over and over until I quit. I discovered one thing from that college job—talking is something I excel at.
3. I want to be Jane Austen when I grow up. Doesn’t everyone?
4. I once won a hog-calling contest at a banquet. I was not embarrassed, but I should have been.
5. In college I agreed to participate in a fun experiment where I kissed a guy who was hooked up to an EKG machine. The young man got so excited when I kissed him that the marking pen flew off the machine. Why do I love telling that story?
6. I love licorice ice cream and orchid tea—both are as delicious as they are hard to find!
7. I have a bird phobia, and yet I love birds! (That is, from a distance.) My house is filled with the fake kind—prints on the walls, statues, and general bird doodads. Go figure.
8. I hate wearing the color orange—it makes me look like a pumpkin.
9. I used to play the French horn in high school. I was terrible at it.
10. I keep some interesting treasures near me when I write—a wooden jewelry box my son made me when he was in school, a candle from the 1960s, a hat once owned by a famous mystery writer, the inner parts of a music box, a birthday card that plays The Twilight Zone theme song, and an old family toy helicopter that says, “Going up.”
11. Thirty-four years ago I rappelled off a cliff alongside the man I was dating. We kissed in mid-air while dangling off that cliff. I ended up marrying that man, and we've celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary!
12. I’ve been writing for about twenty-eight years, but before I started this career I was a waitress, a copy writer, a wheat-tarp roller (don’t ask), a clerk in a gift shop, a nurse’s aide, an assistant administrator at a nursing home, a bookkeeper, a librarian, a receptionist, a computer operator, a desk clerk at a hotel, a cosmetic salesperson, a maid, a babysitter, a model, and a disc jockey. I’d love to tell you that I became accomplished at every job, but the truth is, I was mostly bored. When I finally tried the very thing I’d been running from for years I felt I’d arrived somewhere important—I’d come home.

Content © Anita Higman | Photo Credit: Circle R Studios Photography | Site by Eagle Enterprises