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

Maybe it was inertia -or worse, fear- that was keeping me in the same place.

I decided.. that I could go on being scared forever, that I could keep walking, that I could carry my rage around, hot and heavy in my chest forever. But maybe there was another way. You have everything you need, my mother had told me. And maybe all I needed was the courage to admit that what I needed was someone to lean on.

When you get everything you wanted, I think maybe you do have to be a little grateful for the people who got you there... whether or not they thought they were doing you any favors at the time.

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.

I wished that my job was baking muffins in a muffin shop, where all I'd have to do was crack eggs and measure flour and make change, and nobody could abuse me, and where they'd even expect me to be fat. Every flab roll and cellulite crinkle would serve as testimony to the excellence of my baked goods

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