Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I have been writing since I was in seventh grade when I wrote a story about a girl who had the longest fingernail in the world. It wasn’t disabling because it was retractable. She enjoyed tapping people on the head with it when they were walking a block ahead of her. My teacher made no comment, but my classmates seem to enjoy it.
That was about forty-five years ago and I am still writing strange tales. My Husband’s Toes is a short memoir written about my relationship with my husband’s toes when, one day, tiny faces emerged from the nail beds and began speaking with me.
In Nicky Chase: Man in a Fish Oil Pill, my husband and I discover a tiny man trapped inside a fish oil pill. After carefully extracting him from the supplement’s casing, we learn of the astonishing events that lead to his encapsulation, his experience of involuntary teleportation and time travel, and the dream that kept him alive. Together, we embark on a journey to return him to his rightful size and place in the world, but not before Nikita Khrushchev shows up in our bedroom and Raoul Wallenberg returns from the past.
My book of essays, Slouching Towards My Weltanschauung (available Fall 2014), was written over the course of a few years when I was studying World War II and also watching a lot of reality TV. It covers a strange mix of subjects, including Leni Riefenstahl, Simone Weil, Judge Judy, The Biggest Loser, ghosts and ghost hunters, my Red Ball Jets, and much more.
I worked in bookstores for many years before developing a career marketing design firms. I live with my husband in downtown Chicago.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Nicky Chase: Man in a Fish Oil Pill was inspired by my experiences over the years in following my dream and also by my experience of PTSD. Of course, there would be no story at all if I had never met Nicky Chase, the tiny man in the fish oil pill!
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
My stories are kind of bizarre, but my writing habits are in no way extraordinary. I write late at night (I am an insomniac) on my laptop without music, TV or any distraction.
I visited Hemingway’s house in Key West once. If I could live there and write overlooking the pool with the balmy breezes and six-toed cats and swaying palm trees, I would get up early each morning and write standing up like he did. But as it is, I sit on the couch from midnight to dawn typing away, often with poor posture.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
All books by Primo Levi
What are you working on now?
I am writing a short piece about how reading Primo Levi changed my life.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Up to this point, I have only used BKnight’s FIverr for promotion. And now Awesomegang!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write what you want to read. (I first read that advice in an interview with Toni Morrison.)
And don’t stop. Mine that vein!
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Never, ever, ever give up. Winston Churchill
What are you reading now?
Worldly Philosopher by Jeremy Adelman
(A Biography of Albert O. Hirschman)
What’s next for you as a writer?
I am working on several things.
Calcium Deposits on Parade, which is about reducing my husband’s arthritis by sending the calcium deposits to the Riviera.
A piece on Primo Levi and me referenced above.
And I am contemplating a follow-up memoir to My Husband’s Toes called My Talking Toes.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Jane Eyre, Just Kids, and Les Miserables.