A Collection of Collections

Today is THE day! Mothman’s Curse by Christine Hayes is hitting the shelves!

Happy Book Birthday, Christine!

In Christine’s story, Josie and her brothers have grown up helping out at their family’s auction house. They see firsthand the things that people have collected over a lifetime. It seems everyone collects something and it’s interesting to see what people collect. So today, as we continue to celebrate with Christine, we decided to share our EMU collections.

Janet Fox: Clocks. We have half a dozen old working clocks, all ticking and chiming away, not always in sync. Overnight guests have a hard time if we don’t stop them! I don’t even hear them any more.

Tamara Smith: Penguins. My husband used to collect penguins: stuffed animals, posters, clocks, a shower curtain. My daughter, Zory, collects narwhals: wall hangings, stuffed animals, tshirts, model toys. Here’s a fun picture of my 12 year old daughter Zory at a museum in Ottawa “holding up” a narwhal!  It isn’t one of the ones in her collection, of course, but she’d like it to be!

Zory with a narwhal she wishes was in her collection 🙂

Jennifer Chambliss Bertman: Besides collecting books, I have a wind-up toy collection. For a long time I was in the habit of buying one as a souvenir from every trip I went on. And I have a collection of Muppets items and also artwork by children’s book illustrators. Oh, and there’s my dust collection too. That counts, right?

Susan Vaught: I collect turtles (not real ones). I have them everywhere in my office.

Laurie Thompson-First Response: There is but one thing I collect: books! I can never have enough bookshelves. There are bookcases and stacks and piles in practically every room of my house. I can’t let go of the ones written by friends. I can’t let go of the ones that were my kids’ favorites when they were little. I can’t let go of the ones I haven’t read yet. I can’t let go of the ones I have read and loved. I can’t even let go of some of the ones I hated, because I like to keep them around to remind me what not to do! It’s an addiction. Send help.

Laurie’s favorite old photo of people she doesn’t know.

Laurie Thompson-Second Response: Okay, if you want me to reveal all of my secret oddities (beyond being a book nerd)… I have a small but growing collection of vintage Little Golden Books. I love quotes but can’t memorize them, so I keep files. I have a nice collection of blue antique Currier and Ives dishes. I can’t resist old photos, even ones of random strangers. And I’m obsessed with crows.
This is my favorite old photo of people I don’t know. I found it in an antique store and had to buy it. It makes me happy every time I look at it.

Megan Morrison: I have a small collection of French Market coffee mugs, and a lot of fridge magnets. I used to buy the French Market mugs whenever I saw them (either in the actual French Quarter, or in Disneyland’s reproduction). My husband and I also used to buy a fridge magnet whenever we took a trip anywhere. I’m not sure why we don’t do that anymore – it was a fun tradition. I think we just got busy and forgot!

Megan’s French Market coffee mugs

Mylisa Larsen: Unless we want to count my inadvertent collection of ratty t-shirts then not really. Well, books, yeah but that’s kind of a given with this group, isn’t it?

Rebecca Van Slyke: I’m in the book (collectors’) club, too. I especially like antique reading books. And I am amassing a small army of penguins.

Courtney Pippin-Mathur: Books, flying pigs (glass, stuffed and homemade paper and scotch tape sculpture by my daughter) and earrings (the bigger and slightly funky the better).

Carole Gerber: Rejections! (Let’s hear the hysterical but sympathetic laughter.)

Maria Gianferrari: We collect quirky and unusual clocks. We bought the sardine clock at a flea market in Berlin. This is a glass cat from Venezia. A curlicue clock from Cambridge, UK. A city skyscape made from an old record (a gift from a German friend).

Tick-tock: sardine, glass cat, curlicue, old record

Adam Shaughnessy: I collected comic books through my teen years and they’re still a prized possession. Recently, though, squirrels have been the hot items. Not actual squirrels. That would be weird. But my wife and I discovered shortly after meeting that squirrels both featured prominently in the books we were working on. So now whenever we see squirrel related merchandise, we pick it up! A highlight of our honeymoon was seeing two red squirrels frolicking together in Germany. They did not want to be collected.

Luke Reynolds: I collect pens! Maybe not that unusual for us writers…hhhmmm…I also collect little rocks from camping and hiking trips:)

Penny Parker Klostermann: We collect Santas. They come out every Christmas. We, also, inherited my aunt’s collection. The family lovingly refers to it as “The Jackass Collection” because that’s what it is 🙂

A few of our Santas

Jackass collection

Do you have a collection? We’d love to hear about it in comments.

Remember! Comment on any post this week and you will be entered to win a signed copy of Mothman’s Curse!  Or pick up a copy for yourself or a friend at the following retailers: Amazon, Indiebound, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, and Powell’s.