Memory

For a decade while I was drafting it, my debut novel The Peach Seed had a different title, Peach Seed Monkey, which referred to a tiny monkey carved from a peach pit that had been a present to me and my sister when we were children. A book title has power to pique interest, crack open a gateway to readers, allowing the work to take it from there.  Read more

I was going through my notebooks the other day when I came across a piece of paper; a torn scrap on which I'd written hurriedly a name and the plot number of a grave. Writing a family story is a question of finding where the bodies are buried and this, in very real terms, had been the first clue.  Read more

I've read thousands of books in my lifetime, so you'd think I'd be fantastic at trivia, know the Jeopardy questions, always win arguments, and bore the patience out of my friends. I'm terrible with trivia, mediocre at Jeopardy, vague in arguments, and spend most of my conversational time listening. For some reason, all that book knowledge just doesn't stick with me.  Read more