I knew the basic outline of the novel [The Dissemblers] and would write whatever scene of the book I felt particularly excited about at the time.

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.

I was only loosely aware of [Georgia] O'Keeffe's work. Primarily, I had seen her famous paintings of skulls with flowers, which are not my favorite. I didn't really become familiar with her work until after I started writing the book, but the more I learned about her the more I admired her.

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

I read letters and journal entries by [Georgia] O'Keeffe (which were infinitely more useful than any critical analysis of her work).

I am a tragically bad artist.

I tend to only write productively for one to two hours per day, so there is plenty of time left over for me to work a day job!