I was an English major in college, took a ton of creative writing courses, and was a newspaper reporter for 10 years.

I'm going to continue writing. I'll always be a storyteller. But I'm also taking time to enjoy my life.

I wrote my first books when I was single and then I got married and then had a kid and there were different things happening in my life.

They say - "they" being the great philosophers, or possibly the cast of Seinfeld - that breaking up is like pushing over a Coke machine. You can't just do it, you have to set the thing in motion, rock it back and forth a few times.

If you write chick lit, and if you're a New Yorker, and if your book becomes the topic of pop-culture fascination, the paper might make dismissive and ignorant mention of your book. If you write romance, forget about it. You'll be lucky if they spell your name right on the bestseller list.

I think it has as much to do with honoring my own voice as it does with feeling a responsibility to my readers or my daughters.

I've learned a lot this year.. I learned that things don't always turn our the way you planned, or the way you think they should. And I've learned that there are things that go wrong that don't always get fixed or get put back together the way they were before. I've learned that some broken things stay broken, and I've learned that you can get through bad times and keep looking for better ones, as long as you have people who love you.