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.

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

From beginning to end, the novel [Dissemblers] took about three and a half years to write. I didn't write it chronologically.

I did take one drawing class in school, but for this book I spent a lot of time talking to painters and asking them silly questions.

At the end, I cobbled scenes all together and smoothed out the transitions as much as possible. Incidentally, I would not recommend this approach to writing a book, and will probably not write that way again!

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

Publishing requires a lot of persistence and a fair amount of luck.