A Life in Men is a joyful, ambitious novel that is also an adventure traversing three continents, as well as a meditation on love, sex, and, most important, friendship, which can overcome time, distance, and even death.

There were a lot of beautiful, thin people out there driving nice cars. It was a whole different experience being in L.A.

I'm pro-life, in the sense that chaos seems like life to me and order seems like death.

I loved writing for the school newspaper. I liked to report and interview people, but I really liked to write columns, funny columns.

The great thing about fiction is that I don't have to settle on an answer to any troubling question, or even a solution. I hope that my stories serve as explorations and help show readers how and why real-life women don't always make the "correct" decisions in the face of economic and sexual troubles. We all screw up, but the women I write about don't have back-up plans or money in the back or resources to fix what they have broken.

People seem to want to read more nonfiction than fiction.

I figure that I'm always going to be fine, one way or another, but I do worry about other people who have difficulty moving from one world to the next. It's the folks who are truly invested in their lives who have the hardest time with change.