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

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.

When Ivy [Wilkes] begins her work in forgery, she doesn't yet know the toll that it will take on her own original work. She even thinks it might be a way to find inspiration. By the time she realizes that she has lost her own voice, she is thoroughly entangled in the forgery mess.

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

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!

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!

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.