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Everybody Has a Bucket List - Guest Post from Robin Gold, Author of Once Upon a List

Last week we heard from authors Kristina Riggle and Susan McBride about how Robin Gold's Once Upon a List has inspired them to think about their own bucket lists.  Today Robin Gold shares her own bucket list - read on!

As a child, I had two primary dreams.  First, I desperately wanted to be Annie, which led to a horrific hair cut that left me – with my naturally curly, flaming orange locks – looking like a scary cross between Ronald McDonald and everybody’s favorite singing and dancing orphan who belts the virtue of “Tomorrow.”  (I still can’t pass a “Cost Cutters” without a chill tingling down my spine.)  Second, I yearned to be allowed to eat hotdogs every single day. 

My parents always encouraged me to believe that anything and everything is possible.  No matter what.  Period.  Never once in my life have they suggested that I cannot accomplish something that I set my mind on.  (With the exception of becoming Annie addicted to hotdogs.) 

As a result of my parents’ positive philosophy, I actually grew up believing I could achieve most personal goals.  A helpful factor when it comes to bucket lists!  I successfully rode a 100-mile bike race, taught myself how to sew my own clothes, flew in a fancy-pants private plane, learned sign language and how to play the cello, built a gingerbread house from scratch, moved to New York City and got a pretty decent job in the film industry. 

But as the decades passed, and I became jaded – as adults often do – self-doubt crept in.  I no longer believed that anything is possible.  At a low point, I decided to pursue on a professional level the one thing that had always made me happy: writing.  I figured that if “Operation Author Girl” failed, I could always fall back on competitive hotdog eating.  When I told my parents I was going to write a novel, they smiled and said they knew it would be wonderful.  They didn’t say, “How the heck are you gonna pay your bills?”  Or “I sure hope you like Ramen noodles!” 

I can’t deny it.  Over the years, I’ve wondered if my mom and dad are nuts.  I’ve asked myself, are they sniffing glue?  Why don’t they ever doubt me?  I doubt myself all the time!  When I questioned my parents about their unwavering support, my mom shrugged and replied, “Someday, when you have a child of your own, you’ll understand.” 

Now that I’ve met and married the love of my life and we have a 13-month-old baby, Archie, my bucket list is filled with all sorts of unexpected new ambitions and dreams.  I want to bathe and have enough time to wash my hair and shave my legs.  I want to take Archie to Disney World.  I want us all to ride our bikes together in Europe past fields of sunflowers made famous by the Tour de France (sure, I realize Archie will have to learn how to walk first).  I want to give him a sibling.  I want to stick his first poem on the refrigerator with a magnet.  I want to dress up as the tooth fairy and sneak into Archie’s bedroom the night he loses his first tooth (I may be chubby, but oh, can I rock a tutu!).  I want to attend his college graduation.  I want to see him fall in love and dance at his wedding.  I want to let him eat hotdogs every single day (but I won’t).

Most of all, I want to do everything I can to help Archie believe “the sun will come out tomorrow” and his own dreams can come true.  Because anything and everything is possible.    

Robin Gold is the author of Once Upon a List, now available as an e-book, and The Perfectly True Tales of a Perfect Size 12. She resides near Chicago with her husband, Greg, whom she finally found and who was well worth the wait; their baby, Archie; eleven bicycles; and a bunch of boxes in the basement that will probably never get unpacked. Odds are high that she has a Cheerio stuck somewhere on her body and doesn't know it.

Everybody Has a Bucket List - Guest Post from Susan McBride

Some of our favorite authors have been inspired by Robin Gold's new novel Once Upon a List to think about their own bucket lists. Yesterday we heard from Kristina Riggle and today Susan McBride, author of The Cougar Club and Little Black Dress shares hers!

The List-maker of St. Louis

I’m one of those folks who have always made lists.

Grocery lists, to-do lists, Christmas gift lists, you name it. I like to keep track of whatever’s passing through my brain since so much always seems to be going on in there, and I’m afraid that, if I don’t jot something down, I’ll forget it.

At some point long ago, I’m sure I made a list of “what I want to do when I grow up,” at the top of which was surely “be a lawyer or a teacher.” I didn’t exactly become either, although I do teach writing workshops on occasion so maybe that counts.

During college, the goals I set for myself seemed simple enough: graduate, write novels, become published, and be successful enough that no second job is required.

As I got older, I had other hopes, too, but they felt too tenuous to write down, namely that I meet The One, fall deeply in love, and get married; that I have a baby before it’s too late.

Luckily, I met my husband when I was 41. He made the “fall in love and get married” part happen, but I seriously wondered if I’d ever get to the “have a baby” part after a breast cancer diagnosis at age 42. I was already late in the game for baby-making and then treatment via surgery and radiation put everything else off. (And, by the way, “get boob cancer” was never on my to-do list but that just goes to show how life loves to thumb its nose at us sometimes and say, “Na-na-na-na-na, I’m in control!”)

In those years after while I regained my health—and my sanity—my list was quickly pared down to the most basic things:  be well, be happy, and write the best books possible. So imagine my surprise when I found myself pregnant at 47. It turned my world upside-down again (but in a MUCH better way than the boobal trauma!)

And suddenly, I realized that my goals had more to do with baby Emily than myself (she’s due in the next month or so). What I want for her comes down to these things:

1. Be healthy
2. Be happy
3. Know that you’re loved
4. Learn that smart is way better than pretty
5. Stay curious
6. Read a lot
7. Stand up for yourself
8. Be nice to your mother.

I’ll let you know how this list works out, oh, in another ten years down the road.

Susan McBride is the author of Little Black Dress and The Cougar Club. She’s also a five-year breast cancer survivor and was recently named “Survivor of the Year” by the St. Louis affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure because of her efforts to spread awareness and educate through her writing and public speaking. Her next fiction title, The Truth About Love and Lightning, will be released by William Morrow Paperbacks in February of 2013. For more scoop on Susan and Baby Emily, visit her website.

Robin Gold's Once Upon a List is available now as an ebook, to find out more, click here.

Everybody Has a Bucket List - Guest Post from Kristina Riggle

Today's guest post is introduced by Stephanie, and I thank both her and Kristina Riggle for joining us!

Once Upon a List, the new novel by Robin Gold has inspired everybody here at Avon to reevaluate their “Bucket List”—things we’d like to accomplish before we, you know, kick that proverbial bucket. When younger, mine included things like “get into a good college” (check), “move to New York City” (check), and “marry Prince Harry” (still working on that one).

Now that I’m older, my list has morphed into a series of even more grandiose, seemingly impossible, yet practical goals: “find a rent-controlled apartment in New York City,” “pay off all my student loans,” “take my first trip on an airplane, to any exotic location imaginable” (yes, I’m in my almost-mid-20’s and have still never been on a plane before – sad but true). 

One of the most charming and relatable aspects of Robin Gold’s Once Upon a List is that our heroine, Clara Black, rediscovers her childhood bucket list at a very vulnerable time in her life—her fiancé, the love of her life, has just passed away and she feels shaken, not sure what this version of future holds for her. We follow Clara as she finds her list of old dreams and pursues each of them into a new future. So in celebration of Robin’s heartwarming and life-affirming tale, we have asked Robin, along with two of our favorite authors, Kristina Riggle and Susan McBride to share their very own bucket lists with us this week. Today we hear from Kristina. Enjoy, and feel free to share your bucket lists too!

Kristina Riggle’s Bucket List
My bucket list used to have one thing on it: become a published novelist. Check, as of 2009.

(Really, it’s folly for a bucket list item to be dependent on outside forces. It should have been more like, “write a novel and submit it to publishers.” Moving on…)

I’m glad to be asked now what I’d put on my bucket list, because it gives me an excuse to look up from the frantic onrush of daily tasks and ponder … now what?

There are lots of things I would try once, in the spirit of seizing the day. Take spelunking for example, which is also fun to say. Try it. Spelunking, spelunking, spelunking. Sounds like something Dr. Seuss would have made up, and I love words like that. (See also: blunderbuss, perambulator.)

Now that I think of it, I’m having a little trouble coming up with new bucket list items. I tend to jump into things when an urge strikes. I have – in a small, community theater way – sung and danced on stage, as a chorus girl in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” I also played Miriam once in a local production of “The Women”. No singing or dancing required, but I did smoke a fake cigarette and get in a catfight. (On stage, not in real life. Just to be clear.)

I also embarrassed myself at an audition, and lived to tell the tale. (Sing off key, then slip as I exit the stage, pinwheeling my arms to stay upright? Check.)

Maybe it’s a lack of derring-do. Bungee jump? Run a marathon? Skydive? No, thank you.

There is this one, thing, though.

For many years now, I’ve daydreamed about playing piano. I don’t have grand ambitions to perform Beethoven in concert halls, though I like Beethoven just fine. I’d just like to be able to plink out some Christmas carols and showtunes. I have this fantasy of a cocktail party-turned-singalong, me at the piano, taking requests…

I even have a spot in my living room that’s perfect: a little nook created by a closet in the next room over. It’s almost exactly the right size for an upright piano.

Now, I can’t read bass clef, nor can I make the fingers of each hand operate independently at the same time. The most piano playing I can manage is a few bars of the Muppet theme, one-handed, after I painstakingly locate “C”.

However, there was also a time when I hadn’t ever written a novel …

Kristina Riggle's new novel, Keepsake, goes on sale on June 26th. Robin Gold's Once Upon a List is available now as an ebook, click here for more information and look for Susan McBride's bucket list tomorrow!