I'd be a dope to compare my writing with Wallace Stegner's, but that book probably influenced me in ways I didn't even realize while I was writing The Night Journal.

When I was six I wanted to be a ballerina. By the time I was eight I was fairly sure this plan wasn't panning out. I began aspiring to be an "Aquamaid" at a resort called "Aquarena Springs" in my hometown of San Marcos: Aquamaids got to wear mermaid tails and feed milk bottles underwater to Ralph the Swimming Pig for an audience submerged in a "submarine".

In middle school I wrote a paper on Hemingway and none of the sentences had more than five words.

The author with the greatest influence on me is my friend Stephen Harrigan, who critiques everything I write before I even bother to show it to my agent or editor. He's a truly great writer - author of Gates of the Alamo and other books you might know of, and his instincts about what's working in a story, and what's not, are just about perfect. My books would be very different without his influence.

I'd be a dope to compare my writing with Wallace Stegner's, but that book probably influenced me in ways I didn't even realize while I was writing The Night Journal.

I love Austin. It's great here. I don't mind the heat.

The Night Journal received two awards that I'm terribly proud of - -the Spur from Western Writers of America, and the Willa Literary Award from Women Writing the West. Both these groups are filled with great writers and good people.