[Ivy Wilkes] loves [Georgia] O'Keeffe's work, but is not satisfied by just looking at the paintings; she wants the painting to be her own. The plot grew naturally out of Ivy's personality (and flaws).

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!

I read letters and journal entries by [Georgia] O'Keeffe (which were infinitely more useful than any critical analysis of her work).

I knew the basic outline of the novel [The Dissemblers] and would write whatever scene of the book I felt particularly excited about at the time.

I was loosely aware that most of my characters were fundamentally selfish people, but I didn't intentionally make that a theme.

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.