1--What is the title of your latest release?
SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A young mother, lawyer, and musician freshly divorced from an abusive husband remarries and builds a new life with her second husband. Marriage, home, family, career–all is well. When life suddenly and unexpectedly falls apart again, our heroine, Kim, is forced to re-confront that painful question “What do you do when things that only happen to other people happen to you?” for a second time around, after the passage of years, and with so much more at stake. In her struggle to find healing for herself and her large family, she comes to see that her greatest strength lies in her growing and deepening relationships with her mother, her sister and her own teenage daughter.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
Geography is a character in this book. I needed John and Kim to begin their married life on their own and far from family, and then move closer as their priorities shifted. Kim has a strong sense of place and we watch her grappling with it. Where is home, where do I belong, what are my priorities, what are our priorities? And that’s all part of growing into adulthood.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely. You never know what’s going to come out of her mouth. Keeps life interesting.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Intelligent, trusting, brave
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I can’t compose directly on the keyboard. I literally cannot draft unless it’s on a yellow legal pad. I consume a ridiculously large amount of them. It’s vital that the company that makes them never goes out of business.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Both. I’ll run through a chapter a few times after the first scribble, just because I’m a Virgo perfectionist. But basically I finish a draft, put it away for a few weeks and clean my house, etc., then take it out again and really give it a good go because I’m viewing it fresh. I do this dozens of times. I keep doing it until I’m “totally done,” which happens about two or three times, before I get to “totally, totally done,” which is a feeling like no other.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Truffle fries
9--Describe your writing space/office!
After many years I finally have my “Room of One’s Own,” a repurposed bedroom on the second floor of my house that looks out into the branches of a Douglas Fir. It’s painted a soft beige, the curtains are a pale green botanical print, and I write on a 150-year-old library table from my great-grandmother’s house in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. It’s full of family photos and my favorite tchotchkes but there’s still a twin bed in it, which is handy for naps.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Wait. Only one?!? I listed like thirty. Here’s nine: Eudora Welty, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Saul Bellow, Nelson Algren, Nabaokv, Faulkner, Dickens, and Twain.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Doris Lessing’s “The Golden Notebook.” I read it at age nineteen and have reread it three times since.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I decided to self-publish with my first book, back when, because this thing called self-publishing had become possible courtesy of the digital revolution and I was headstrong, impatient, and uninterested in hierarchical structures that tell you “do it this way or we won’t let you in.” There are only gatekeepers if you believe in gatekeepers. My focus is on getting the creative content out there, and it will find its own audience.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
Literary fiction, but I confess that I’m developing a taste for history.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Only one? Roma. Also Atonement, A River Runs Through It, and The Music Man.
15--What is your favorite season?
Spring. It’s like standing on the threshold of change. The light is so beautiful.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Soaking at my favorite hot springs resort in Idaho, or taking a jaunt to the coast from Portland for the day. Anything to do with being near the water.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Dark Winds on Netflix. It’s a series based on Tony Hillerman’s detective novels set in Navajo country in the seventies. Really well done, I love anything set in the West or the Southwest, and it’s fun seeing all those rotary dial phones and cars with chrome plating.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Indian
19--What do you do when you have free time?
Swim or hike!
20--What can readers expect from you next?
I’m recording the audiobook of “Songs” beginning in April, so it should come out later this year. “Eat Pray Drive” is a collection of my earliest humor essays, no longer available online; it will come out later this year as well. You can take a peek at the cover on my website. I’m also incubating my next novel. Its heroine is Grace, the daughter in “Songs.” It will overlap in time somewhat with the current book and take her further.
Young lawyer Kim MacLean is determined to believe in second chances, so when a sea of butterflies descends, flowing around her as she leaves Tulsa and an abusive marriage behind, she takes it as a sign that her new path is off to a good start. And not only for herself, but for her young son, happily kicking his heels in the back seat. She and her new husband, John, ultimately settle in Seattle, buying a century-old farmhouse behind her sister Karen's modern subdivision. The two women raise their growing families and support each other in their respective careers.
When tragedy strikes Kim's life a second time, upending all she thought to be true, she draws on the wisdom of the women in her family-her mother, her sister, and even her own young teenage daughter-as she struggles to make peace with the universe of lost answers and choose the right path forward.
Fiction [Four Elk Press, On Sale: March 11, 2025, Paperback / e-Book , ISBN: 9798990418004 / ]
I grew up in Glencoe, Illinois. After graduating from Mount Holyoke College, I obtained a Master’s in Art History at the University of Chicago. I also admit to a law degree and a stint as a PhD student in philosophy. I arrived in Seattle in 1996, took one look at all the coffee shops full of folks in hiking boots reading books and thought: What’s not to like? I managed a large and cacophonous household while writing constantly, but especially during nap time. My five children are now card-carrying adults who wear hiking boots and read books unprompted, so I count that as a success. Now that I’m an empty-nester, I like to read, hike, swim, travel with my husband, and… write. Still.
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