Alice Blog

Fuzzy blanket

*sigh* I’ve finished my childhood series and am coming to terms with that odd space between saying farewell to a fictional friend and finding a hold on my own reality. I realize this has spoilers so edit this however you like, but like I said before, her relationship held so many similarities to mine, it was almost startling that I’d find such cathartic comfort in my childhood books…where she tearfully asked the same questions I had…like if you’d ever been with “someone who makes you feel lonely…not all of the time…but a lot of the time.” The moments in between where conversation just takes a little more effort than it should…his disinterest in things you want to discuss…and the stark contrast when you come alive in the midst of your friends…the physical chemistry but little else besides the dutiful recap of the day…knowing they’re a good person but still asking yourself why it’s not working, excusing it as practical/normal give and take…listing off the qualities that are good and still finding yourself asking “What more could I want?” and yes, the lack of joy—and how I dearly love to laugh…desperately questioning yourself, trying to exercise self-awareness, asking “What if I’m looking for the perfect man and he doesn’t exist?” It was seriously like reading a list about my own relationship…and then also tearfully reading everything to come and hoped for to come. “You’ll feel like you’re coming home.” In my years of single independence, I never concerned myself with settling down and I long for either that previous contentment, or that feeling of coming home. Her recovery and subsequent story was great…I’m not sure what I was expecting, as I knew the story continued until she was 60…I think maybe I was afraid there was just a huge jump and a lengthy recap or the waxing on of a middle-aged protagonist, but I was delighted to follow her journey through the ups and downs of marriage and parenthood. I appreciated the change of tone as she matured, and I couldn’t have asked for a better ending for my friend. My heart got a much needed hug from this and perhaps squeezed a couple pieces back together. I’ll miss my friend and will revisit her on a rainy day. Until then, be well and God bless.

Sometimes I feel that the series was written for a very special person, and I think you must be one of those special people.  I’m so glad that it meant that much to you.  Often we find in literature a reflection of ourselves, and when the right book comes along at just the right time, it’s something we don’t forget.  Thank you very much for a letter I’ll treasure….

Keeping up with Alice

I am a 32 year old male fan from Texas! I first read your books (Alice and Shiloh) in the 7th grade. Quarantine has made me extremely nostalgic, I am going to reread the old Alice books and catch up ok the new ones over the years. Do you recommend I start from a specific order. I know that seems like a silly question, but should I start with the preludes or should I read from the order released by year?
Thanks for all the great memories over the years. Sending our love from Dallas!

I’m so glad you like those books so much.  The Alice series has quite a number of male fans.  I think you would enjoy them the most if you start with the prequels and read straight through, as the books were written.  (See the order on this website).  Alice gets older in every book, so you’ll want to follow her and her friends as things happen in their lives. In the very first book, for example–“Starting with Alice”–you’ll get a taste of the  relationship between Alice and her brother, and enjoy seeing Lester as a teenager.  You’ll also see Alice’s concern for her widowed dad.  Enjoy, enjoy!

Still finishing up the series!

I’m the fuzzy-blanket reader from earlier and I’m now finally in the last book. It’s made me cry, I just gotta say—my big-girl breakup was so so so similar…where everything was good…but without a crowd of friends or something to do, when it was just us….when Les said the word “Joy” the tears began to fall. This has been so oddly therapeutic and I just wanted to write really quick and say thanks for putting this part in. I’m looking forward to what happens next!

I loved your email.  Keep reading, then write to me again….

Alice movies

Can you make another alice movie? A sequel of when shes in high school please?

I really don’t have much to do with movie making, except to give my permission when an offer is made. Producers keep showing an interest now and then but I’ve had no recent offers.

Thank you

Hi Phyllis, I’ve read the Alice series since I was a child and into my young adult life and I just wanted to thank you for your amazing series. Your books mean a lot to me and helped me growing up. I was recently talking to my husband about the Alice series and how special it was and in recalling the books, it truly felt like Alice was a friend of mine. Thank you so much for your books and all the fond memories! I hope you are doing well!

Thanks so much for writing to me.  The Alice memories are special for me too.  I had a lot of fun with them, especially the scenes with Lester or Aunt Sally.  It was a unique experience to put down every wacky or embarrassing thought I’d ever had into the mouth of someone else and see how others reacted to it.  And the remarkable–well, not so strange, really–thing was the hundreds of letters I’ve received over the years from both girls and women saying they worried about the exact same things. Now younger sisters are reading the books; mothers who grew up on Alice books are reading them to their daughters.  I’m glad I lived long enough to finish the series.  That was one thing that worried me.  But I’m doing quite well, working on another novel for adults, have lots of friends and relatives whom I love, but I spend part of my time worrying about COVID19 and all the rest of you.  Stay well!

Revisiting Alice as an Adult

I found the Alice series in the school library when I was in third grade and read them all through grade school. I remember them being laugh-out-loud funny. I never forgot Alice.  That was more than twenty years ago. This summer I decided to reread the entire Alice collection, thinking it would be a fun, light-hearted escape from these incredibly weird times. It has been a joy, but it’s also been very revealing. I can see now just how badly a kid like me needed your books.

I had a rough childhood. My parents loved me, but they were deeply flawed. My mother was a paranoid schizophrenic whose shifting moods were confusing and terrifying and often dangerous; my father and stepmother were alcoholics who neglected my most basic needs. Alice made life bearable. I got lost in books without realizing I was escaping. It never occurred to me then that Alice’s mother’s absence was different from my own, but I’m sure that an unarticulated part of me identified with that longing for a good mother.

I did not realize just how much Alice was teaching me about how to raise and love myself and love others, particularly women, despite the failings of the adults in my life.  It took a lot of therapy to get to a point where I can express those things. One observation that my therapist returned to again and again is how remarkable it is that I’ve been able to foster and hold onto deep friendships and to seek out mentors, particularly mother-type figures, over the course of my life. After re-reading Alice’s stories, I’m confident that your writing played a central part in that.

I know this note is a bit of a mess. I was confiding in a childhood friend this morning about how rereading the Alice books made me feel. She also loved your novels as a kid. She suggested I reach out to you.  I just want you to know that your books, in so many ways, saved and guided me. I am so grateful. I owe you so much. I’m sure I’m not the only one.  Thank you, thank you.

 

It was just wonderful to hear from you, and I’m so happy that the books were helpful.  Not only can books help the reader but they can help the writer.  I was fortunate to have a loving mother,  but she wasn’t perfect–no mother is.  And I do remember looking at various teachers as my role models for how to dress or how to handle an awkward situation. I would even want to mimic their voices.

But I want to tell you that your letter was also dear to me because my first husband became paranoid schizophrenic five years after we married.  He probably had symptoms long before that, but I didn’t recognize them until I went through three heart-breaking terrifying years of moving with him from state to state because he thought the Communists were after him, and sometimes believed that I was one of them.  I described all this in my autobiographical account, Crazy Love, published by Morrow in 1977.  Friends have asked how I could ever write about something so very personal, but I feel that sharing so much helps not only the reader but clarifies things for yourself.

Fortunately, we had no children, and I married again to a perfectly sane man and we had two sons.  But remnants of that first marriage resurface from time to time, and I remember them with great sadness.   It’s the humor in our lives, however, that keeps things in balance, and I wish you the very best in all that’s ahead.

Thank You!

Hello. I hope this e-mail finds you doing well despite the chaos going on in the world right now. Some of the very few things that have been a constant in my life are your books- Shiloh and Alice. I was a book worm growing up and read your books many times. Even now as I’ve grown up, they continue to have a special place in my heart. As I write this message thinking about the books you’ve wrote, I can’t help but feel happy. I want to thank you for writing such memorable books that have made my life better. I still read your books and will continue to do so. Thank you.

 

How nice of you to think of me on this sweltering day.  I just came in from a walk, took off my mask, and thought how wonderful it will be when I can eat with friends again and meet with my authors’ critique group and visit grandchildren and feel normal.  It is really awesome that my books have meant so much to you and I truly appreciate your taking time to tell me so.

Finishing the series!

I remember reading my first Alice book in either 7th or 8th grade…there was much I learned; I appreciated the open talk…questions I didn’t know I had, etc. I ended up getting a bunch of them I think through Outrageously Alice and saved them for my nieces when they got old enough, which I just passed on to them last summer (they consumed those books SO darn fast!). It occurred to me that I’d never finished the books, and earlier this year I went through a big-girl breakup…the talks of marriage, of kids…the big-people breakup where it’s not necessarily because anything’s bad…it’s just not right. And it just so happened that the next books were when Alice and Patrick broke up. So there I was, reading your Alice books at age 33. To have an escape…life simplified, my childhood Alice books, where sometimes good things fall apart, sometimes you wrestle with God, and other peoples’ lives have a scripted direction and normalcy when quarantine prevents any shred of it, your books truly have been the best fuzzy blanket to crawl into. Thank you!

Alice books a fuzzy blanket!   I love it.  I loved writing them, too, because I was reliving moments in my own life when I wished I had some direction.  I remember a particular breakup when it really hurt the guy when I told him I’d met someone else.  It hurt me almost physically to see him in so much pain, and yet I knew he wasn’t the right one for me.  So much of me slides sort of sideways into the Alice books in disguise, but I’m glad the feeling is still there and readers can sense it in their own lives.  I hope you’ve followed Alice all the way to the final book.  Thanks so much for writing to me!

Alice Bible Questions, potential bug

Hello there, I would just like to ask if there is a problem with the Alice Bible on the Just The Facts page. I wanted to show my fiance the page because she just finished reading Now I’ll Tell You Everything. I went to the page but could only see a few lines of the table of contents. Anyway, thank you so much for all the wonderful stories.

For the web master, here is what happened: It worked on my phone, and android, and it worked in “incognito mode” in chrome, but not in the regular window.

I’v forwarded your message to my web master.  Thanks for letting us know.

Thank you!

I’m sure you get this a lot, but I just wanted to say thank you for writing the Alice series! I started reading the series a over decade ago, when I was an awkward, unconfident middle school girl trying to figure out how to be one of the “cool kids”, as cliche as it sounds now. In fact, I remember the first time I checked out an Alice book was when I saw one of the “cool” girls at school reading one. Thinking back now I wonder, “Wow, it’s so crazy to think how much both of us actually related to Alice, even though we seemed to come from two completely different worlds.” The last time I picked up an Alice book was probably sometime my freshman year of college, but I never did end up finishing the series! To be honest, I forgot about Alice for a while until I went on a walk earlier today. To my surprise, even my mom remembered the Alice books I had and mentioned how I had later donated them to a family friend’s daughter, who was a few years younger than me at the time. I really hope she found the books to be as much of a treasure trove of wisdom, knowledge, and inspiration as I did growing up! In fact, remembering that made me realize how much of an impact this series had on me as an adolescent and how many of the things Alice experienced in high school are still very relevant to me in my mid-20s. I hope that I can eventually finish the series and that I am able to have a daughter of my own one day with whom I can have the privilege of sharing Alice’s quirky and relatable narratives with.

Hope you are doing well during these unprecedented times!

 

I am doing well, thank you, but long to be able to meet with my authors’ critique group again, and my chorale group, and go out to dinner with friends and family.  I’m so glad you remember the Alice books.  Believe me:  you are definitely going to want to read to the end of the series, because the very last book takes her from age 18 to 60, and SO much happens in her life.  It was kind of you to donate the books to a family friend, and I hope you are able to get copies of whichever of the 28 books you are missing.  Thanks so much for writing!