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

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.

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

This was my first novel [The Dissemblers ]. I've never seriously written short stories, and actually find short stories much more intimidating as an art form than novels.

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.