I was in the emergency room twice with heart palpitations and panic attacks. As one of my actor friends pointed out: your body doesn't know that you're making art. You think about struggle and challenge and you imagine yourself weighing 302 pounds and being restricted and in despair. Your body doesn't know that that's not the case.

What is it about sadness that can be so fulfilling?

I have had, like most women, a lifelong preoccupation with my weight. My first published short story was a love story between an elderly man and a very young morbidity obese woman.

The world's waistlines are expanding, but it's an epidemic of a larger issue in terms of our bounty having become our burden.

The drugstore is a wonderful place to see all manner of ailments.

Now that I live in Southern California, my current world certainly speaks to me, and I sense that my next book will have a more American and southerly setting. But that's certainly not to say I won't be back to Leaford.

the only thing left to do is love