Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I have written two books: Wild Nights and Spring Moon, with the third and last in the trilogy due out in November 2014. They are fiction, perhaps best described as Literary Fiction. However, they’re not stuffy! I don’t hold back on humor, sex, or goring sacred cows.
I love to write! I grew up in Southern California, but now live on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest. It’s very rural, reached only by boat or by plane. We don’t have a stoplight in our entire County. As a result of our isolation, I learned to fly, which I love. I have been married for many years to a man who is very low-maintenance, and who knows how to cook a limited number of things for those nights when I’m glued to my work. I worked for many years in the film business and in design. I still do architectural design work.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book, Spring Moon, is the sequel to Wild Nights. It was inspired by watching and listening to all the people around me, myself included, who struggle with marriage, remarriage, and blended families. Also, so many people told me that “Wild Nights” had them revisiting and reevaluating their pasts, that I thought it would be interesting to see how our pasts influence our presents. It is a different book. Like Wild Nights, the story is told by Hannah Spring, but she is at a very different place in her life.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I don’t think so. Sometimes I write all day. Sometimes not at all. I don’t read fiction when I’m writing.
I take a daily long walk/hike with our dog, during which I mull and solve issues in the story.
If I’m very stuck on a place, I put the story aside and wait for input from life to help me see the way through. Kinda of like I do in life. Though I don’t stop breathing, of course….
What authors, or books have influenced you?
All of them. Good and bad. I was asked this question the other day and I went on to list a ton of books and authors. I devour any humor that has a love of zany humans at its core. Nasty humor doesn’t appeal to me. Though very different, Nora Ephron and Carl Hiaasen come to mind.
I like the surrealism of Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The full blast strangeness of D.M. Thomas’s White Hotel. It took me three tries, but I finally engaged with Wolf Hall, and loved it. Salinger, Irving, Vonnegut. Barbara Kingsolver.
I come from a family of readers. My older sister introduced me to Salinger, and “An American Tragedy” when I was in 6th grade. Not sure I understood it all, but most of it. I also read “The Snake Pit” and “And Then There Were None” that year. They stuck with me.
I read all over the place for fun: Sanford, Connelly, Highsmith.
What are you working on now?
The last in the trilogy, “Meggie Moon.” It is told from the point-of-view of Hannah’s teenage daughter. A much less painful age to visit, at this distance.
I’m percolating a new project about a lonely and long-suffering (he thinks) Sheriffs Deputy in a rural community.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I haven’t hit on it yet. Promoting straight fiction is much more difficult that a specific genre or non-fiction.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Read Stephen King’s “On Writing.” It is by far the best and only advice a writer needs.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Keep going.
What are you reading now?
“Eyewitness to History” an anthology of first-person accounts of historical events spanning decades.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Books 3 & 4. Dig in and get my website done. Promotion promotion promotion. Friend me on Facebook!
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?
They would all come from Nevil Shute. Hard to say which ones. I’d be happy with any 3 or 4 of those.
Author Websites and Profiles
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