When Ivy [Wilkes] begins her work in forgery, she doesn't yet know the toll that it will take on her own original work. She even thinks it might be a way to find inspiration. By the time she realizes that she has lost her own voice, she is thoroughly entangled in the forgery mess.

I hope to work through disappointment and frustration with as much grace as [Georgia] O'Keeffe did, and I hope to have the same confidence in my own vision.

The motivation to paint seems more pure, or at least more personal, when the artist is doing it for herself.

Now I am as big of an [ Georgia] O'Keeffe admirer as Ivy [Wilkes] is, but that came through writing the book.

I find that time constraints actually make me more productive, and "real world" experiences provide a lot of inspiration to write.

Finally, I found a wonderful agent who wanted to work with me, and she sent it to one billion publishers and received one billion rejections, until I was fortunate enough to be matched up with the Permanent Press.

Yet [Georgia O'Keeffe ] always stayed true to her vision, and was at times uncompromising in following the path she saw for herself.