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.

The book [The Dissemblers] officially came out two weeks after my thirtieth birthday...am I still young?

I am currently in nursing school, so one day I will be both a nurse and a writer.

Ivy [Wilkes] does exhibit a certain impatience at the beginning of the book [The Dissemblers]. She doesn't want to wait through years of hard work and insignificance to make her mark on the art world. Part of her growth is in realizing - even embracing - that the process of art is more important than the product or the recognition.

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!

I was envious of [Vincent] Van Gogh because I could never make a painting that beautiful! (Ridiculous, I know.) That was when the character of Ivy [Wilkes] began to take shape for me.

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