Tea Talk Thursdays

Getting to Know Me

I want to introduce what will be a regular feature on the blog. Tea Talk. I want to get to know my readers and also help you get to know me. Today, I’d like to give you some more background on me and who I am as an author. Here are some q&a’s from my most recent author interviews.

Tell us a little about yourself?

I am a Colorado resident. I am a mother to a fantastic little girl who loves owls and ballet. I also have one of the most supportive husbands in the world. As I’m doing publicity for The Clouds Aren’t White, he’s more than once expressed his concern that I’m not finishing the draft for my second novel, due out in December. 

When and why did you begin writing?

I began writing when I was taught how to hold a pencil. I have little stories from first grade (for all non US citizens-age 6). I was a voracious reader. I have clear memories (because it still happens) of picking up the condiment bottles when my parents would take us out to dinner to read the labels. I also read the menus, where the place little bios, everything. I began writing because so many wonderful books transported me to such fantastic places that I could not keep in my love for them. Writing stories was an escape for me. 

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

When I was halfway through the first draft of The Clouds Aren’t White. I have probably twenty stories sitting in the dark corners of my laptop, comprised of about 20 pages each, that I threw away because they just weren’t “the one.” With The Clouds Aren’t White I finally found a story that I wanted to tell, that I thought needed to be told.

What inspired you to write your first book?

My husband. I’m actually serious. Every story I started and then proceeded to scrap he would get disappointed because I wasn’t happy with it. Through every little step he encouraged me to keep writing, to keep working. So I wrote it because of him.

How did you come up with the title?

The title came about in a weird way. I was actually painting, I’m not very talented but its fun, and I was trying to get the sky just right and I kept looking at the photo that I was painting from at the sky is this mass of colors. Because white isn’t really white. There are yellow-whites, blue-whites, green-whites…just ask anyone who has painted the interior of a house, they’ll tell you. And the novel is so wound around terrible events in Emmeline’s life that I wanted to capture the depth of her experience and also that light can be found even in the darkest of times (oh gosh, I’m quoting Rowling).

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

I really want my readers to grasp the amount of dedication that Emmeline has to her family, particularly her husband and daughter. As mothers and wives, our worth is so often (how do I say this delicately?) overlooked. I want readers to see the worth of such a strong woman, the necessity of a support network, the love we bear our children. Emmeline is the definition of a feminist, she chooses her own path, not letting even her parents dictate to her, and follows through.