My life wasn't always smooth sailing. Two members of my family were diagnosed with cancer, so I spent a lot of time in hospitals and giving home care. Several close friends died. I fell in love with the wrong person. And I was working all the time but still sliding into debt. My life wasn't anything like I thought it would be. And then I got in a bad car accident. I walked away, but it was like a splash of cold water. The next day, I started writing Twelve Lives. Sometimes, when you're backed into a corner and have nothing to lose, it's a great place to write from.

We notice a bee struggling inside a flower, or the smile of a woman as she passes us on the street, and for that tiny fraction of a second we understand what it means to be alive in the world, and then the moment passes, and we start worrying about our bills again.

My life wasn't always smooth sailing. Two members of my family were diagnosed with cancer, so I spent a lot of time in hospitals and giving home care. Several close friends died. I fell in love with the wrong person. And I was working all the time but still sliding into debt. My life wasn't anything like I thought it would be. And then I got in a bad car accident. I walked away, but it was like a splash of cold water. The next day, I started writing Twelve Lives. Sometimes, when you're backed into a corner and have nothing to lose, it's a great place to write from.

Ben Miller's writing has left a trail of clear and perfect images lasered permanently in my mind. His imagination is astounding in its breadth and detail, but it is the heart behind the words, the emotion he brings to the smallest moments, that makes me such an admirer of this writer and his work, and has me anxiously awaiting, and cheering for, the publication of River Bend Chronicle.

Teaching and editing have helped me enormously, and brought wonderful people into my life. When I see an author I'm editing struggling to bring a flash of an idea to the page, or notice a student's hands shaking as they read something they wrote out loud for the first time, it keeps things in perspective. How vulnerable we all are. How hard it can be to open the door.