When I'm wallowing in misery over everything I have to do, I'm going to remind myself of what another local mom Amanda Lamb has done in less than a year.

Not only has she had a full-time job as a reporter at WRAL, but she also published two books and was a mom to her two daughters, ages 5 and 8.

In August, Smotherhood, her witty collection of parenting anecdotes, came out.

This month is Deadly Dose, the true crime story that involves another Raleigh mom - Ann Miller, a scientist who eventually pleaded guilty to poisoning her husband with arsenic.

And now Lamb is working on a third book, a follow-up to Smotherhood called Girls Gone Child. It should come out next summer.

So she's taking a little break - sort of.

"I just went part-time at WRAL," she said. "They've been incredibly supportive of my writing and the direction that I'm trying to take my career and I just feel very fortunate to be able to do both. I got to the point where I was trying to have two careers and raise two children."

She'll have more time to write, but also to spend with her kids.

"I'm actually spending the summer with my daughters," she said. "It's been great. I write about parenting, so I think it's important that I spend a lot of time parenting."

Her first love is writing about being a mom, but when Chris Morgan, a retired detective with the Raleigh Police Department, asked her to write about the Miller case, she decided to give it a try.

Most anyone who has lived in Raleigh for the last eight years has heard of the Millers. Eric Miller, an AIDS researcher, died in 2000. His wife, Ann, was immediately under suspicion, but it took four years to indict her. The couple had a young daughter, now eight.

Lamb said the book includes some details never before made public. Like Ann had at least two lovers.

Deadly Does also involves the story of Morgan, who was consumed by the case.

Ann is serving a 25-year sentence. Her sister shares custody of the couple's daughter with the child's paternal grandparents.

What drove her to kill? Investigators have some ideas, Lamb said.

"Really what it comes down to is they believe, and this is their professional opinion, that she was a psychopath," she said. "She didn't kill for money. She didn't kill for a lover. She basically killed him to get her husband out of the way."

Amanda is on tour with the book. She'll appear at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham at 7 p.m. Tuesday (June 10) and at 7 p.m. June 17 at the Barnes and Noble on Maynard in Cary. Go to her Web site for details.