I live in a village where people still care about each other, largely.
Let me say that I absolutely loved writing 'A Common Life,' because it was a book about love.
Even the roughest character, underneath all that hurt, is someone who wants to love and be loved.
For a very long time, I wrote a book a year, and was eager and willing to do it, to put bread on the table, to have my work out there. Now I must write a book every two years, and that's never enough time, either.
I really care about my readers. I care about anyone who reads my books.
My grandmother influenced me so deeply.
Food is a great way of communicating.
Publishing is, by its nature, about deadlines, and deadlines are toxic.
I have raced against the clock since I went into advertising at the age of eighteen.
My life is extremely full and wretchedly busy, and I feel that while my life drains energy from my work, my work in turn drains energy from my life. The result is, I am always playing catch-up spiritually. That is my thorn.
Well, I think some people are very happy in retirement. And in a year and a half I'm going to see how happy I feel in retirement. I'm just going to not work quite so hard, but I'll continue to write as long as God gives me breath.
I've put everything I had and I've given my readers 120 percent, and that's the truth.
So here is what my advice would be: If God has given you a dream, you'd better get cracking because He wants you to use it. That's why He gives them to us in the first place.
I stepped out on faith to follow my lifelong dream of being an author. I made real sacrifices and took big risks. But living, it seems to me, is largely about risk.
My first novel is loaded with food references largely because my cupboards were bare, and I was writing hungry.
There are so many people who don't know small towns exist. When I write, I want to give my readers two things: one is a sense of consolation, and two, I want to make them laugh.
I learned not to be so bitterly defeated when my fiction took a beating from editors. I learned in advertising to color in the lines and have my work done on time and to make it the very best it could be.
There's nothing trite about being consoled in a world that does everything in its power to deliver sorrow.
I grew up hearing words like snakeroot, sassafras, mullein - things that had wondrous, mysterious sounds in their names.
I try to put my heart out there to everybody. They don't have to be Christian. For example, I have lots of Jewish readers. I love my Jewish readers.
