What inspired you to write your first book?
This is an embarrassing story but posi-lutely true. I dated a guy in high school whose niece published a bestseller in 2005. Her debut novel became a major motion picture, too, one that plays all the time on TV. When I found this out, that she had written a book, it suddenly occurred to me that almost anyone could write a book if they wanted to, even me. Why should the next generation enjoy all the success and adulation? Silly me, that I thought I could write a book, too. As it turned out, my first novel was as dreadful as you might expect from someone who never took a writing course. It will never see publication. But you learn as you write. I learned I needed to write a LOT more to improve.
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Writing can be a difficult job, what inspires you to keep going?
After I wrote non-stop for about a year, I began submitting my stories and essays, and begin winning prizes and getting published. The more success I had, the more successful I became. I then entered a graduate program for writing. Now, on darkest days, I think about paying off my graduate student loan, and it spurs me on, knowing I didn’t indenture myself for nothing.
Seriously, one kind word from a reader—one great review from someone I’ve never met is still the greatest high. Little things mean so much.
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What are you working on now? What’s next?
I am finishing a novel I’ve been working on for almost six years called RACE CARD. It’s a mystery with another female amateur crime solver. Clever (I hope), but not funny like WHO KILLED ‘TOM JONES”?
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What’s your writing process, schedule, or routine?
I can’t say I have settled into a new process quite yet. I’ve had three different jobs in three years and since I work full-time, I am still acclimating myself to the position and the commute to Philadelphia. With apologies to the Creator, I almost always write every Sunday morning now on my laptop, with my sweet kitty nestled beside me on our beat-up old sofa, which she and other felines scratched to death over the last two decades.
I almost always write a blog post on the weekend, when my brain is not consumed with work-related matters. Or when people tick me off. Blogging is great for tempered rants.
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Who is your favorite book character of all time? Why?
I just love Archy McNally in Lawrence Sanders’ McNally mystery series. He’s a law school dropout, mooching off his Palm Beach parents, while doing discreet investigations for his father’s law firm. He is a thirty-something dapper dresser and gourmand, always telling you what he is eating. His fake gentry family is a hoot, too, since they have gobs of money, but his father comes from a line of circus performers. He cheats on his lovely girlfriend and has funny friends and associates. He’s very flawed, and I just love him to death.
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What advice would give to aspiring writers?
Write, write, write. Read, read, read. Don’t ever, ever respond to a bad or stinging review—ever—in a public forum. Ever. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Period.
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What’s your favorite quote?
Words are like stones. Feel the weight of them.
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Who would you most like to have a cup of coffee with? (Dead or alive)
Explain…
I loved A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. It was a life-altering book for me. I don’t know if she would want to talk to me, but I’d love to chat with her to find out whether she exorcised any demons writing it.
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What is your biggest pet peeve?
I really don’t like reading books when every character has a strange name and several of them begin with the same letter, i.e., Aeglaeca talked with Eidanel and with Celeren’s help, they decided to assassinate Elronhir but only if Elet went along with the plan. I love Anne Perry’s mysteries but her fantasy novel Tathea was the most painful 40 pages I’ve ever read, like being stuck with needles.
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Tell us something quirky about you.
I have a refined romantic sensibility and blubbered like a baby reading The Notebook, but I can’t abide conventional and formulaic romance novels. What’s wrong with me? Am I destined to be an unfulfilled romance reader? Thank heavens for Jane Austen and Nora Ephron. I also don’t like every Nicholas Sparks novel. Some like A Walk to Remember I can’t abide at all. I can’t help it. Just too sappy.
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Favorite comfort food?
Hard salami. No joke.
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Star Wars or Star Trek?
Star Wars—the first three episodes. The bar scene featuring the Cantina Song played by the alien combo is my favorite in the whole series. Yes, details do matter.
Sunrises or Sunsets?
Definitely sunsets. Archy McNally introduced me to the expression “the shank of the evening” or that lovely gilded portion of day that is the early part of the evening when the air is cooler and stiller and the sky turns all those luscious colors. Now my family even uses it, just calling it “The Shank.”
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