Where are you from? Tell us a little about yourself!
I live in Kirkwood, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. I was raised in Cuba, Missouri, a small town just over an hour away. I fell in love with writing in high school and really do give credit for that to two of my former teachers, Jane Reed and Connie Moore. I dedicated my first novel, God Bless the Child, to them and surprised them last year by establishing a scholarship in their names.
I’ve been in communications my entire career. I married my college sweetheart 35 years ago, and we have three grown children. I’m so proud of them. My husband and I are going to be grandparents for the first time in October. We cannot wait to meet this little boy!
My first foray into being professionally published happened back in 1987 with an article in Rockford Magazine. I’ve interviewed and written features on Beverly Sills, Judy Collins, Gene Siskel, and Debbie Reynolds. I’ve had articles in a number of publications, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Midwest Family Magazine, Ms. Magazine, and Writer’s Digest.
I like to think that my path toward writing fiction started with an essay that was chosen for The New York Times bestseller The Right Words at the Right Time, Volume 2: Your Turn (Atria 2006). In this piece, I described finding out that my grandmother had been a lingerie model. Through this project, I started meeting people who encouraged me to think differently about my writing. I started that journey, and nearly 20 years later, the conditions were finally right for my first novel, God Bless the Child, to be published in 2024. It’s the first in a three-book series, The Women of Paradise County, published by Speaking Volumes. Yes, I’m pinching myself!
Tell us about your book? How did it get started?
Violet is Blue, which is set to release June 17, 2025, is the second book in The Women of Paradise County Series. I’m working feverishly on Book Three, House of Teeth, which will be released in June 2026.
I started writing the first book in the series nearly 19 years ago. Most of God Bless the Child was scratched out on a stack of yellow legal pads in a café while my youngest daughter was in preschool a few afternoons a week. I finished the book, working with NYC-based editor David Tabatsky. We’d even started pitching it to agents. One agent liked the writing, but wanted me to cut out the main character, Mary Kline. I declined and put it in a drawer for a while. I wrote other pieces, but frankly, life kept getting in the way. There were more important things to tend to. Just about two years ago, I decided to start writing some things again. I reached out to David, who read my new pieces and suggested that we pull that first book out of the vault. He read my new pieces and saw the opportunity to build on the first book with a series. The timing was finally right to pursue this. I could not be happier about it. Sometimes, the universe has bigger and better things in store for us.
How do you create your characters?
People ask me this all the time. I wish that I had a good answer. I do love to observe people and how they interact with one another. It just fascinates me to think about what people bring with them to each new situation. I also really do think that to be believable, characters must have layers and dimensions. Like real people, sometimes they are predictable, and sometimes not. If we respect characters and readers, we have to provide depth. I do have a penchant for characters who are quirky and complex.
Where do you write? Is there something you need in order to write (music, drinks?)
I tend to write in my family room or a specific chair in our living room. If I’m writing in the morning, I need coffee and peace. Anytime after noon, it’s Diet Coke on ice or bust. Sometimes, just for a change of scenery, I’ll hide in a café. Since I still work a full-time job, my evenings and weekends are consumed with writing books and promoting them. I’m not complaining. It’s a lovely, lovely problem to have!
How do you get your ideas for writing?
I wish I knew. I imagine that my people-watching habit helps. I think being curious helps, too. I also believe that most good writers are also dedicated readers. Guilty as charged. Writing is my jam, but reading is a close second!
What do you like to read?
I love all kinds of fiction, but I’m also obsessed with history and stories about real people. I tend to do quite a bit of what I would call rabbit hole reading. If I like a particular author, I’ll read everything I can written by that author and anything I can find out about them. If I learn about a particular period in history or person that fascinates me, watch out! I’m on a mission. True confession: I have an abiding, lifelong fascination with the Tudor period and anything connected to it. I can’t help myself. Favorite writers include Pearl S. Buck, Wallace Stegner, Anne Tyler, Anita Shreve, and Kate Chopin. I’m also known to read books more than once. I highly recommend this. The books stay the same, but we change a little bit each time we revisit them. I like to think that I’m giving books a second and third chance, and they are doing the same thing for me.
What would your advice to be for authors or aspiring in regard to writing?
Well, first and foremost, don’t give up. Keep writing and honing your craft. If you’re serious about getting published and being taken seriously, work with a professional editor. A good editor is worth every penny. They aren’t there to coddle, but to make your work better. Recently, I’ve started incorporating listening into my own refinement process to give my eyes a break. There are some apps available that make it easy to hear what you’ve written. It’s amazing what the ears will catch that the eyes don’t. I’d say it’s also very important to connect with other people who are writing.
Note: The Women of Paradise County Series will soon be available on Audible and other audiobook platforms!
Link to website:
https://www.anneshawheinrich.com/
Amazon buying links for eBooks and print:
God Bless the Child
https://www.amazon.com/Bless-Child-Women-Paradise-County/dp/B0CZVVCZHR
Violet is Blue
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F54F3VTF
Series:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CZBSVLM4?binding=kindle_edition&ref_=saga_dp_bnx_dsk_sdp
Barnes and Noble links:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Anne%20Shaw%20Heinrich
Bookshop.org links:
God Bless the Child
Violet is Blue
https://bookshop.org/p/books/violet-is-blue/90f2cca8bc7cce37?ean=9798890223159&next=t
Excerpts from God Bless the Child
Elizabeth
Mary Kline tried so hard to anticipate my desires. It often seemed like she was waiting with bated breath for my next request, ready to smother me with her response.
I once made the mistake of mentioning that I liked chocolate milk. Mary Kline came home from the grocery store with four large jugs of milk, more than the three of us could consume in a month. In another bag, she had collected all the ingredients to make enough chocolate milk for my entire fourth grade class. Our kitchen became a laboratory and Mary the mad scientist, determined to concoct the best chocolate milk possible, something perfect enough for my spoiled palate. She had purchased two types of dry cocoa mix, three kinds of syrup and even a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips, which she melted in a double boiler, all in a furious effort to unlock the secret to my happiness.
All I wanted was a glass of chocolate milk. Mary turned everything into an elaborate, sticky-sweet, big fucking production.
When I was about 11 years old, I had a brief infatuation with cats, especially kittens. In the beginning, I liked all the knick-knacks and posters of kittens Mary found for me. She even sewed a nightgown out of fabric with kittens all over it, and a matching housecoat.
Encouraged by my rare display of enthusiasm, Mary Kline went further, determined to keep my love flowing toward her. She brought home a kitten. The infatuation lasted two days before we figured out I was so allergic to the thing that my eyes swelled shut and my arms and neck were covered with hives. We ended up giving the cat to someone down the street.
Once I could see and breathe again, the allure of cute kitties was over. But Mary Kline clung to the cat thing for quite some time. She was always bringing me books about cats, clothes with cats on them and figurines of cats doing the rumba, having tea and riding little cat bicycles. She was convinced that cats would keep us together. One day, at least two years after the allergy fiasco, I blew her cat bullshit out of the litter box.
“Mary, I don’t want another stupid cat thing, okay? I don’t even like cats anymore. God! Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
I was rude and unkind.
Mary took the little cat bride and groom figurine out of its packaging and placed it on one of the crowded shelves in my room. I said nothing and she shuffled away.
If Mary could have just loved me like a normal person we would have been fine. But she did everything to excess, embellished with her suffocating, exasperating Mary Kline goo, which obliterated all her good intentions.
I shut down her attempts at mothering me every time. Mary was so needy. Her zealous desire to surrender herself frightened me, and I rebuked her like a cruel and ruthless daughter.
Mary Kline
A fortress of fat. That’s what I built around myself. I would never be kissed. Never be approached, not even with unwanted advances. I’d never love a man or feel my love returned. To find me, my prince would have to fight his way through layers and layers of lonely flab.
I returned from my grandparents’ home that summer larger than ever, which sent my poor, devoted seamstress of a mother into a sewing frenzy. My proportions had become so unwieldy that she was forced to expand her understanding of geometry and conventional theories of mathematics. Fabric arrived in bolts, and I soon had a closet full of tents to cover the freak show my body had become.
As my mother measured my bulky waist and gargantuan upper arms, taping and pinning in silence, she must have known that the hulk before her represented the end of our bloodline. There would be no grandchildren coming her way. This could only happen if we recruited a benevolent Eskimo to plunge a harpoon into my side.
My mother’s hands brushed against my skin as she smoothed and adjusted enormous swaths of fabric over my body. This was the only physical contact I received, aside from the occasional slap on my backside from an uncle or my father.
I was ready for market.
My prospects were slim to none, but it wasn’t the dearth of romantic possibilities that saddened me so much. What bothered me more was the probability that I would never have a child, a suckling piglet of my very own. This hog could not bear the notion of a life without children. Little humans liked people like me, and I was drawn to them. Whenever I had the chance to get my fat hands on a toddler or baby, I did, often making a pest of myself.
Excerpts from Violet is Blue
Sally Lend
Then I met little Jules. He broke me in half. He wasn’t the first darling boy I’d welcomed into my classroom. Most of them were cute at this age. They could be a little grubby or scrappy, but you had to chuckle at their antics and their inability to keep their hands to themselves. The way they stuffed their front pockets with trash and treasures amused me. I caught myself trying to imagine these tiny little masters as their grownup selves––bankers, real estate agents, firefighters, lusty ditch diggers gathered at the end of a bar, throwing back a few before stumbling home to paw at their tired wives.
Gloria Sellers
Educated women like me who are loved and enjoy anything we could ever want in life don’t fall for just any old trick. We’re savvy about quite a bit. We can see when we’re being snookered. We can sense when we’re being used. We can back away from the fire. Chances are, we’ve been burned a time or two and can tell when it’s about to happen again.
Uneducated women, those who are not loved enough and must scrape and scratch for what they need and want, don’t fall for just any old trick, either. They’re savvy in their own way. They can see when they’re being taken for a ride. They get wise. They know when they are being used. They can also back away from a fire. Chances are, they’ve also been burned.
So, what’s the difference? One woman has everything to lose and the other is already in the hole. The one who has nothing, and nobody, has already learned that she stands to benefit by sticking as close to the fire for as long as she can, as long as it keeps her warm. She’s figured out that fires come and go, and so do friendly faces. She’ll take her warmth where she can get it. She’s not particular. A fire’s a fire. A warm body’s just another warm body. Fires and warm bodies are simply fuel to be consumed.
Violet Sellers
By Halloween, the girl I left on the other side of town was too old for silly costumes and no longer frightened by ghouls or vampires, or leering clowns marching in front of the house, ready to barter a good clean joke for one of Gloria’s famous popcorn balls. I watched from the living room window, peering into the spooky night, knowing that real monsters existed, and they had tricks, not treats.