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 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.

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

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.

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 am a tragically bad artist.

At the beginning of the book [The Dissemblers], Ivy [Wilkes] has a long way to go in order to achieve self-sufficiency. Although she is very independent, even somewhat of a loner, she is very affected by other peoples' opinions. At the opening of the book, her ideas of success and achievement are largely defined by the approval of others; over the arc of the story, I think that begins to change a little.