The past belongs to everyone who was there. What do you remember? ADD YOUR STORY
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Hello! Thank you for checking out our site! We are all really excited and nervous about our life story taking its first steps out into the world, and everything that it entails. For instance, it freaks us out (in a good way) that you can already pre-order our book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and IndieBound. And, um, all of our embarrassing family photos are now online – a slight by our own hand! What were we thinking? Well, it was long ago, after all. Things have changed. Especially our hair. (In the sisters’ case, we have grown out of those hairspray-hardened looks, embarrassing root perms and helmet-inspired do’s and, in Dan’s case, he has long since shed the bowl cut-mullet look (and Cats sweatshirt!) he rocked in middle school.)
None of the Welches have ever blogged before, so this is a whole new thing for each of us. Our plan is to begin updating the website regularly closer to when our book hits the shelves – Mark your calendars! September 29! We’ll be posting everything from racy, funny stories that didn’t make it into the book to delicious family recipes like Mom’s pumpkin bread. So, please, check back with us!
In the meantime, feel free to poke around the site, read a sample chapter from the book, listen to some jams in our Mixtape section, watch some old soap opera clips or home movies in our Soap Stories section, and see our childhood photos in our Family Album.
One feature of the site that we are really excited about developing is Add Your Story, which is where other people post their stories about the years in which this book took place. If you knew anyone mentioned in this book, or even any place, please send us an email with your memory! We’ll be collecting them and eventually putting them up online for everyone to see. Because that’s one of the things we realized when writing this book: Stories belong to the people who tell them. So tell yours!
Congrats, D!
This is very interesting! I am interested most in the life and career of the late Ann Williams, but I look forward to reading anything that is later published this fall.
We have a messageboard which is devoted to the cancelled soap operas and serials plus the currently-produced soap operas. One of the posters informed us to your website.
I just finished your book thirty minutes ago. Thank you so much for sharing your touching stories. I was inspired by the bravery of each Welch child. I hope that you all recognize your inner strengths and talent for writing.
All my love to all four of you!!
I remember all of you!
You all came for a Texas visit and swung by Waxahachie, Texas. (Y’all must have been just rolling your eyes about how lame or rural or small or Texan it all was, and how lame and rural and small town texan we all were, who knows)
I was a senior in high school in 1983 and my dad, Dr. Dave Williams is your mom’s cousin. My oldest sister is Ann Williams, family name!!
In personality,though, my younger sister is Diana. Y’all came to visit us in Waxahachie while your mom was sick and I can understand that being transplanted to Texas would have been a nightmare and a bad idea, but I remember wanting all four of you under our roof. So much so, that I swear I thought my Dad went up when your Mom died to make that offer. I know my Dad, though, and he probably never found his voice or said out loud that you all would have been welcome, (again, miserable, but welcome).
If you can follow this: my dad’s sister’s daughter (so as equally related to you or as equally distant from you as me, but, still, on your mom’s side of family)said to me recently, “I always thought they got a raw deal.”
WOW I loved, loved, loved the book. GOOD for y’all. I read it in one setting and am blown away with the courage of your honesty.
I remember blips of your visit to us. I think your Mom came, I’m sure she would have because y’all didn’t know us and wouldn’t have come that distance alone.
Liz went to school with me for a day, and even though I was somewhat settled and popular in my senior year, like they did for Dan, Liz’s beauty and smile worked magic on everyone she met and scored me points even in that Spring semester.
2nd blip: Amanda and I spoke in my parents’ kitchen kind of trying to figure each other out and were honest in self-assessments. We shared a moment of not getting on each other’s nerves which left me satisfied and wishing I knew what to do or how to do more to help each and all of y’all.
Final blip: Diana came running into our back playroom and her energy just made Dan, and Liz and me laugh but she also took my breath away and saddened me to the point of tears. I didn’t let y’all or anyone see me cry but I went back to my room, shut the door and just bawled. My younger sister is my earliest memory and one of my better friends. She has so much passion and energy and intelligence and heart, it was true about her when she was little, too. She and Diana just remind me of each other. I couldn’t imagine as one of four children what would happen if my parents died. IF they had died while Margy (my younger sister) was younger, I couldn’t imagine anyone loving kids like my younger sister and Diana remotely in the same way parents do.
My older sister has been prepared and organized all of her life. She once took it upon herself to decide where the four of us would go if both parents died. She gave herself the neighborhood pool, she gave the sister she shared a room with the neighbohood geek. She gave me the neighborhood grandparents and she gave Margy to the youngest most energtic, fun loving friends of my parents she could think of, even though they didn’t live in our neighborhood….
Your point on being split up, though, is so deep and thought provoking. I know it makes y’all who you are to have been split up but my hope is that one of many consequences of the book is to promote keeping siblings together when possible, or at least arranging shared time together, holidays, etc.
Oh, okay, one final blip: we’re all in the kitchen and my parents briefly praised Buzz or mentioned him, and I could tell y’all didnt’ really relate or like him that much, it wasn’t that y’all were unkind about it, then, in my parents’ kitchen I just remember wanting to bizarrely throw out, “if you don’t like Buzz, you can still like us” but that’s the thing: it’s not, to me, as important that you didn’t like him, as I just give you good for every detail in the book rings true and too little in our world gives the encouragement and the example of putting your voice, your words and impressions out there, honestly.
Anyway, it is an amazing gift you’ve given to the world. Thank you for it.