Blog hop! And then back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Thanks to Beth Kephart via Caroline Leavitt via Bill Wolfe. I think. (Tempted to use the word begat.)Their answers wildly different from mine, you'll enjoy reading!

1.What are you working on?
Revisions on my new book, ONE MORE DAY, tentatively scheduled for Oct 2015 from Sourcebooks. It’s about kidnapping, marriage, religion, and seeing ghosts. But it’s really about trusting people. About being believed. And about being different. Then I go back to writing CHARMED LIFE, about a divorced woman still in love with her ex, who goes bankrupt and is forced to care for her cold and distant elderly mother. And my blog posts will go back to my quest for filling my almost-empty nest with wild hobbies.

2. How does your work differ from others of its genre?
As the reviewers always say -- “it’s surprisingly dark.” Not surprising to anyone who knows me ☺ -- Readers, though, at book clubs I visit, always seem most surprised by beautiful writing. They hunger for it, and not all women’s fiction gives it to them. I try.

2.Why do you write what you do?
All kinds of crazy-ass sh—t fascinates me. I see plot everywhere. But I have to write it my way – and not everything matches up. So I try to find a good mesh between my writing style and my conjured ideas.

4.How does your writing process work?
A combination of knowing when to sit, and knowing when to take a walk.

And . . . I throw the baton over to Merry Jones. If you love mystery, you'll love Merry!

Can you handle your own truth? A FREE book for one lucky writer.

Oh would-be writers of memoir, rejoice. Beth Kephart, National Book Award Finalist and U of Penn memoir professor has gathered all kinds of advice for you in her new book. Leave me a comment here and I might pick your name and mail it to you. (And leave a link to where you've reposted my blog entry and get special consideration.) Or just buy yourself a dang copy here. and get started pronto!

Reading and researching.

While I'm taking it easy this month, I have a lot of reading research to finish up for my next novel. Since this novel involves approximately a bajillion subjects I know nothing about -- farming, sailing, genealogy, Afghanistan, amputees, and interfaith marriages -- I am making excellent use of a color-coded filing system given to me by my research Jedi master, novelist and memoirist Beth Kephart. I don't know if her new book about memoir, Handling The Truth, covers her crackajack organizational skills or not, but I'm sure looking forward to its debut this week.

A new book to fall in love with

Beth Kephart, who I first ran into at BEA-- and who spoke so eloquently at The Book Blogger's Convention in New York -- has a new book debuting, YOU ARE MY ONLY. She's a National Book Award Finalist and her young adult fiction is so beautifully written your teenager's verbal SAT score may kick up a few notches -- but she'll be so entranced you won't notice. This is the first time a professor from Penn has answered my five questions. Beth, you are a credit to the Ivy League. More about her fabulosity right here.


1.What kinds of things are on your desk or near your work space to inspire you?

Honest answer? (No, Beth, lie to my readers.) It’s a glass-topped desk. I’m most inspired when it’s so spanking sparkling clean that it holds the reflection of the trees beyond my window. Upside down trees. Upside down birds. Crazy mixed-up storm.I like that best.


2.Describe the last page/chapter you wrote.

There has been a violent accident. My protagonist witnesses the aftermath from a window above.


3. Who is your favorite fictional character from any book you’ve ever written--or read?

I am very in love with Death, the narrator of The Book Thief. I am very in love with Michael Ondaatje, who is right there, so whisper close, behind every character he writes.

4.What is the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you at a book club or bookstore?

Funny? Do funny things happen to me? Do I go to book stores? Have I been invited to book clubs? Oh. Yes. I just reminded myself. The members of a book club came in from a certain west-coast city and asked that I give them a tour of Chanticleer gardens, where some of my stories take place. They arrived, in force. I gave them what I think was a damned fine tour. Introduced them to gardeners and to garden things. Told them history of both the political and particular sort. Soon the book club members were all giving me their cameras, and I was standing in the hot sun (this was July, Philadelphia), taking their portraits. Standing on the hill, taking their portraits. Squatting on the grass, taking their portraits. Several hours into the event, damp as a newborn and heat overcome, I said to myself, Beth, my dear. You are what fools are made of. (See, everything is a damn novel, people! This is a novel!)


5. Name a word you’d like to put into one of your upcoming books.


I just asked my husband, an artist who has never written a book and believes (we just counted) that he has read no more than 20 of the things in his adult life, this question. He said “wan.”

I asked myself. I said “stinker.”

Not sure if I have ever used either of those words in a manuscript. One is Victorian and the other is just old school. I have used: "Rats!" which is awfully close to stinker. Beth's YOU ARE MY ONLY has other beautiful words in it, and is a great choice for a book club. Just don't ask for the garden tour.