Dani Collins: All About Siblings

I swear it's no reflection on my parents, but my sisters and I ran pretty far afield the moment we were old enough. I left to live in a ski resort for a year, then my middle sister married and emigrated to New Zealand for several years.

She and her husband came back to Canada and she's now remarried, living in Winnipeg. My youngest  left for Vancouver Island until she married an Aussie and now she lives in Brisbane.

Despite all that, we're very close. Here we are together with my kids last summer. I'm on the far left. Do you see any family resemblance at all? It looks like we can barely stand each other, doesn't it?

My kids also fled the nest soon as they could. It's called 'school,' but it feels like payback. My daughter, however, will cop to being homesick. Thus, when her brother was leaving for school, she and her boyfriend made a point of moving to be closer to where my son is taking his classes. I have to admit, it's really nice to call one of them and discover they're hanging out.

This closeness between siblings is something I love to reflect in my writing. I don't know if I could write about siblings who loathed each other. The closest I've ever come is in my February release, Only In His Sweetest Dreams.

It's Book Two in a duet about siblings who grew up on the wrong side of town and find love in the most unlikely places.

In Only In His Sweetest Dreams, Mercedes doesn't hate her sister, Porsha, but she is awfully frustrated with her. She even has to take steps against her, after Porsha abandons her children in favour of partying.

Mercedes can't get pregnant, so it's a doubly big decision to take custody of her sister's children. She doesn't even know how to be a mom, and taking them jeopardizes her job at a senior's complex.

Fortunately (I say that ironically) she has L.C. He's the new handyman. He took this job to fix the damage done by his son, who pulled a B&E on the place. Yes, stellar parenting on his part, but he and Mercedes are drawn to one another despite that. Too bad L.C. has a painful secret that she may not be able to forgive.

In keeping with my theme of siblings, I have just completed a quartet for Harlequin Presents called The Sauveterre Siblings. They're two sets of identical twins. The youngest, Trella, was kidnapped when she was nine.

All four siblings are extremely close, with unique relationships and personalities. In Book One, Pursued By The Desert Prince, (March 1st) Angelique is torn between protecting her sister and her feelings for Kasim while Kasim has sibling troubles of his own!

You can read more about Pursued By The Desert Prince on my website here, or it's available on Mills & Boon now.

Do you have brothers and sisters? Are you close? Geographically? Emotionally? Why do you think some siblings don't get along?

Dani Collins is a USA Today Bestselling author writing for Harlequin Presents, Tule's Montana Born, and herself. 

Would you like a free sample of Dani's writing? Join her newsletter! You'll auto-magically get a link to download Cruel Summer, a short story romance she wrote exclusively for her subscribers. 

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ALL WASHED UP

Wet towels have become the bane of my existence. I’m practically drowning in wet towels. I find them everywhere. Damp towels on the bathroom floor, saturated swimming pool towels on the hardwood floors. Dripping hair towels soaking into the carpets.

With my three kids home all summer, the soggy towel factor has increased exponentially. It’s almost out of control. By my calculations I am faced with at the very least nine wet towels a day, and that’s if the kids only go to the pool once. If they go to swim team practice in the morning, that’s three more soaking wet towels. Don’t even get me started on swim meet days: two to three more sodden towels per kid (that is if they don’t lose them at the meet), bringing me to a grand total of six thousand four hundred and twenty four soggy towels per week, give or take a few.

I try to encourage the kids to hang up the towels, give them a chance to air dry. But they’re just so darned wet. The towels, not the kids. So even assuming the kids did hang their towels regularly, which they’re not, the damp towel dilemma has taken over my life.

I’m washing, and drying, drying and washing. But I don’t seem to make any headway.

And supposing I do get all my wet towels washed, there’s the other problem of the towels in the closet. Every day, I wash those towels. Fold them neatly. Place them in an orderly manner on the shelves of the linen closet. And every day I find the clean towel pile overturned. In an effort to get to their favorite towels, the kids pull from the bottom of the pile, allowing the stack to tumble. Dead soldier towels, strewn about the floor. At least they’re not wet.

My husband came up with a solution to our towel problem. Unfortunately he announced it at 11 o’clock at night to an audience of overly tired kids.

The idea was this: pit each kid against the other. Whoever finds a wet towel on the floor can confront the towel offender, and force a payment of 25 cents. My teen-aged son, who never met a get-rich-quick scheme he didn’t like, started to gleefully calculate how much money he could make annually off of his sisters by merely busting them violating the towel rule.

My older daughter, our number one towel offender--but aside from that all-around wonderful helper--burst into tears, feeling persecuted. We couldn’t calm her down for thirty minutes.

My other daughter, another towel violator, stomped off to her room, slamming the door shut.

Today, my son, the mercenary, happened into his sister’s room in search of our kitten, when what did he come upon, but a wet towel. Now mind you, at least it wasn’t heaped on the carpet. It was draped across a chair. But nevertheless, it was not in its designated spot on the towel rack. Excitedly he thrust the towel in his sister’s face. She shrieked at him, accusing him of sneaking into her room, her private space. He leered at her, that ire-inducing smirk that every brother in the world knows will elicit hatred, venom, retribution from a sister. Usually in the form of a slap, smack, pinch, punch or kick.

There’s a lot more noise in my house today. Whereas yesterday, I spent the day in relative peace, stooping to pick up the myriad of wet towels laying about, today, I had to don my striped shirt, secure my whistle over my neck, and adopt the role of referee. It hasn’t allowed me much time for washing towels.

I think my life was easier when all I had to worry about was picking up wet towels off of every horizontal surface in my house. Excuse me while I go run interference with my kids, I think it’s getting violent.