Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Pennsylvania. I got my B.A. and M.A. in English literature and creative writing there. When I was a junior, I spent a semester in Florence, Italy, and loved it, so I decided to move there after graduation. I spent four years in Florence, teaching English mostly and working on fiction writing, then returned to New York City, where I started working for magazines. I also wrote a book called “Living, Studying, and Working in Italy,” which Henry Holt published.
Eventually I moved to Atlanta, where my now-husband was living, and worked for magazines and websites. I was a Senior Editor at Departures magazine, the Home & Garden editor of Atlanta magazine, and the Editor-in-chief of a monthly lifestyle magazine called The Atlantan. But, I always wrote fiction in my free time. About six years ago, I decided to retire from the magazine world so I could just focus on my daughters, my fiction, and volunteering.
This year I took the plunge and started my own company, Pearl Multimedia LLC, and my own imprint, Northside Books. The first book I published is a novel I wrote called COME FIND ME. It’s a love story and stayed in the Top 100 bestseller lists on Amazon.com for seven weeks since I released it in April 2014. It’s very exciting! By the end of 2014, I plan to release three more of my novels.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
COME FIND ME is a story about a woman named Jessica who has discovered that her teenage daughter is becoming very self-destructive following a break up with her boyfriend. She’s scared and she wants to do whatever she can to save her, but little is working. So, Jessica tells her the story of how her first love (the only person she ever fell madly in love with) walked back into her world as she was preparing to marry someone else.
The bulk of Come Find Me is the story that Jessica tells. It takes place when she’s 26 and Mark, the boy she fell in love with ten years before, rides into her hometown on his motorcycle, ready to find out why she disappeared from his life. What they discover is that they’ve both lost a lot. Their fathers died in Iraq, and her brother-in-law died in Afghanistan. Mark has also lost his mother and was forced to leave the U.S. Air Force, where he was a pararescueman, which means he’s specialized to parachute into dangerous situations to save people. I think that the Kindle Book Review summed up the novel well when the reviewer said, “Beyond presenting a good story, the book raises questions, important questions, in this case, questions about love and marriage…. Can you love two people at once? Who would make a better husband?”
COME FIND ME was inspired by a lot of things. As my daughters get older (my first just turned 13!), I’ve been remembering more how it felt to fall in love for the first time, and how much it hurt when that relationship ended. I’ve also been in touch with families of people who were sent to war, and have thought a lot about how hard it is to be the ones left behind. But, the biggest inspiration probably comes from my own marriage. I met my husband Brian when I was 17, and we became great friends. We lost touch for years and had our own adventures, then fell in love in our late twenties. It’s pretty cool how a person can come back into your life in a very new and exciting way, if you’re open to it.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I like to write with all the curtains pulled shut. I’m a big gardener, so seeing the outdoors makes me want to jump up and run outside. When I see the sunlight at the end of a writing session, it’s a treat!
What authors, or books have influenced you?
So many! The first author I ever loved was William Faulkner. He got me hooked with “Light in August,” but “The Sound and the Fury” was the one that blew me away. In terms of more contemporary works, I’ve really enjoyed books by Gillian Flynn (everything by her, but especially Gone Girl), Anita Shreve (The Weight of Water), Cathleen Schine (The Love Letter, The Evolution of Jane), Tana French (Faithful Place, The Likeness), Dennis Lehane (Mystic River), Emily Giffin (Love the One You’re With, Something Borrowed), Jodi Picoult (Nineteen Minutes), Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier), A.S. Byatt (Possession), Stephenie Meyer (Twilight), Suzanne Collins (Hunger Games). I write in different genres, so I’ve been influenced by lots of writers from different genres.
What are you working on now?
I’m wrapping up work on my next novel that I’ll publish this year. It’s called THE UNIFIED THEORY OF LOVE AND EVERYTHING. I’ve been working on it for years and it’s very dear to me. The story is about two married people in their thirties, Emerson and Finn, who volunteer to help fix up an old, overgrown estate in Delphi, a fictional town in middle Georgia (USA). The woman that owns the estate, Sybil Hay, is a retired physicist who spent the summer of 1951 with Albert Einstein on a lake in Princeton, when she was a young woman and he was depressed When the novel opens, Emerson is having major marital problems and is dealing with her father’s recent suicide. She desperately wants to convince Sybil to let her to restore her gardens, in hopes that it will help her failing garden design business take off. As soon as Emerson learns that Finn is already helping out at the house in the mornings, she’s worried. Emerson has met Finn once before through her husband, and she felt an incredibly strong pull. Finn is dealing with his own marital problems and is trying to decide whether to retire from his career as a Master at Arms (i.e., cop) in the U.S. Navy. As their attraction grows, and as Sybil becomes sicker, they each have to make difficult choices that can threaten the lives they’ve built.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
The best method for promoting my books is through people that have come to know me, even if just through social media. I let people know all over the place — Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, email — and they help me spread the word. I’ve been amazed and humbled by the generosity of these people. I also put my ebook up for free sometimes through Amazon’s Kindle Select program, then I post about it on lots of fantastic, generous sites that will list it for free and feature it for a small sum — sites like AwesomeGang.com! This really gets the word out, too.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Keep writing no matter what anyone tells you. When you try to get published by traditional publishers and through agents, be prepared for people to love your writing, but not necessarily love the work you’re offering up. Just keep writing. Don’t let their criticism get into your head in a negative way; take a good, hard look at what they’re saying and decide if you can use it to improve your work, or if you need to chock it up to their own, subjective opinion and ignore it. Remember that you know best whether your work needs to be changed. Also, whenever you read a book that you feel strongly about (love or dislike), pick it apart to figure out exactly why you feel that way. Other authors are the best teacher for writers.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Live in the present.
What are you reading now?
I’m rereading “The Likeness” by Tana French.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I’m going to start rewriting my other two novels soon. One is a romance set in 1951. The other is a crime novel set in contemporary Georgia. I also want to keep adding great posts to my new blog, www.patchofearth.com. I’d like to write a book about writing, too. Plus, I’m mapping out a romance series right now. I’ll start work on that soon, too.
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?
The Bible. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. Faithful Place by Tana French. Jaws by Peter Benchley.
Author Websites and Profiles
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