Ane Mulligan, one of the most beloved members of ACFW and president of the award-winning blog, Novel Rocket, is on the campaign trail promoting her new release, Chapel Springs Revival. I’m one of her biggest fans and also one of the many beneficiaries of her kindness and support, so when she started working on her promotional plan, I jumped in with both feet, offering space here and on my collaborative blog, AuthorCulture. I saved the questions about her professional life for that site. Here, we get a peek at her private life.

One of the first things I wanted to know was about her lap dogs. She and her husband own not one, but two Mastiffs.

“Seriously?” I said, with a healthy amount of incredulity. “How did you fall in love with these huge, goofy beasts?”

Here’s her response:

Who said I fell in love with them? They slobber and sling it nine feet up my walls! Do you know how much work it is to clean that? I was coerced into ownership. Twice. The problem is, they’re so ding-dong cute. And sweet. And goofy.

My favorite story involves Shadrach, our first mastiff. He scared the fire out of Frank, a friend of ours, when he leaped up and woofed in his face. However, later that day, we were sitting around the table, eating chips and salsa. Shadrach had chosen to sit next to Frank and watched every chip go from the bowl to his mouth. Finally after enough coaxing, Frank held a chip between his trembling lips, and Shad took it without even touching Frank. They’ve been best buddies ever since.

ME: How did you meet the hubs? How long have you two been together? Has he always been supportive of your writing dreams?

ANE: I met Hubs on a blind date—with the other fellow. The gal and I switched dates during the evening, and we’ve been together ever since. We married eight months after that date and have been married for almost 43 years, which boggles my mind since I’m only 35. Hubs has always been supportive of my dreams. I didn’t start writing, though, until our nest was empty.

ME: Some spouses are amazingly supportive, others aren’t. What is your advice to authors who struggle with non-supportive spouses?

ANE: Don’t try to involve your spouse in brainstorming or plot twisting if they aren’t supportive. Keep that for your writing buddies. Even my hubs who is supportive and an artist, doesn’t get all excited about my characters. He’ll offer thoughts and suggestions sometimes, but he’s more left-brained—an oddity being an artist—and so he doesn’t think at all like me. My favorite writer joke is how many writers does it take to change a light bulb? Forget the light bulb; let me tell you about my book. Hubs is all about getting the light bulb changed.

About the book:

Published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, it released Sept 8th. In a nutshell, Chapel Springs Revival is a romp through miscommunication in marriage.

With a friend like Claire, you need a gurney, a mop, and a guardian angel.

Everybody in the small town of Chapel Springs, Georgia, knows best friends Claire and Patsy. It’s impossible not to, what with Claire’s zany antics and Patsy’s self-appointed mission to keep her friend out of trouble. And trouble abounds. Chapel Springs has grown dilapidated and the tourist trade has slackened. With their livelihoods threatened, they join forces to revitalize the town. No one could have guessed the real issue needing restoration is their marriages.

With their personal lives in as much disarray as the town, Claire and Patsy embark on a mission of mishaps and miscommunication, determined to restore warmth to Chapel Springs —and their lives. That is if they can convince their husbands and the town council, led by two curmudgeons who would prefer to see Chapel Springs left in the fifties and closed to traffic.

While a large, floppy straw hat is her favorite, Ane has worn many different ones: hairdresser, legislative affairs director (that’s a fancy name for a lobbyist), drama director, playwright, humor columnist, and novelist. Her lifetime experience provides a plethora of fodder for her Southern-fried fiction (try saying that three times fast). She firmly believes coffee and chocolate are two of the four major food groups.

About the Author:

President of the award-winning literary site, Novel Rocket, Ane resides in Suwanee, GA, with her artist husband, her chef son, and two dogs of Biblical proportion. You can find Ane on her Southern-fried Fiction website, Google+, Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter, and Pinterest.