My vision as a writer is to seek the light (Quaerens Lucem) to shed on different topics ranging from travel to parenting to dating to cultural adaptation. My interests as a writer are how events, especially exposure to new cultures, inform character development and can improve people or sometimes ruin them. I am interested in the expatriate existence and the diasporas.
My genre preference is contemporary fiction because I believe it offers the most variety and can include many sub-genres, but also probably provides the most exposure to my interest area, which is literature of the expatriate, diaspora, and refugee. I am interested in how people become displaced through active self-selection or by circumstances beyond their control, and how they assimilate or don’t with the new culture, and how the people of that new culture react to them.
The Author Persona
Tell me a little about yourself. I’d love to know what has led you to this point.
I was born in the Midwestern US, but have lived and was educated on both coasts. I also lived in Hong Kong three times for a period of more than 20 years in total: pre-handover, during the handover, and post-handover. In addition, I lived in Dubai and Tokyo for a few years each. I now call Santa Fe home as two of my three children live there and my work as an international marketing content producer for an asset management firm is based there, but I plan in the future to divide my time between Cabo and Santa Fe. In my home also live my white labradoodle Max and my younger daughter Elizabeth who came home for a while after grad school in London. Son Thomas who is a native American antique art dealer lives nearby and my older daughter lives in Hong Kong with her fellow teacher husband and their two young sons. I just got to see them at the beginning of the year while they were visiting the US and they are all wonderful.
I love to travel and have visited more than 60 countries. Still on my list are South Africa, the Galapagos, Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, and Iran. Lately, I have also gotten interested in wine and golf. But I think the biggest recent event that got me into writing fiction was my husband’s death in 2021. I took stock of my life and thought about what I wanted to change at that point when my responsibility to him was ended. I realized I wanted more structure in my free time to avoid loneliness and I wanted to write fiction, so I began looking at writing courses and found the SNHU MFA program which offered a solution to both desires.
What inspires you?
Inspiration can come from many sources, some of it external like a beautiful sunset or a conversation with a friend, or experiencing a musical performance, or reading a book. Internal inspiration can come from the analysis of experiences. The particular novel I am working on now was inspired by events in my life that were concentrated during the period I lived in the Middle East, but draws on experiences in other times and places as well.
Since my husband died in 2021, I have been dating in search of a partner for the back 20 or 30 years—whatever is allotted to me. I think my next work is going to be a group of short stories highlighting some of those dating experiences—a mix of romance, mistakes, pain, and some humor, I hope.
I think as a writer you need to be open to inspiration from all potential sources in your life. It requires being in the moment and aware, things I am not always good at being.
Who are your favorite authors and how have they influenced your writing? Any favorite books that have influenced you?
That has changed over the years. When I was an undergraduate, I loved Henry James and I do still admire him. There will always be a warm spot in my heart for Jane Austen and George Eliot as well. I took a Russian literature in translation course as an undergrad and loved Lermontov, Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy. I read some of the French authors in French and enjoyed Balzac and Flaubert.
I am embarrassed to tell you that it was only in the least two years that I got around to reading Toni Morrison, Shirley Hazzard, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, and Margaret Atwood, but I am a fan. I also like Jonathan Franzen and Amor Towles. (In fairness to me, I should add that I do a lot of professional reading for my work as an international marketer in financial services.)
Santa Fe recently introduced an annual International Literary Festival and I try to attend a few sessions each year. This has introduced me to a wider range of authors, both fiction and non-, including many local and regional writers, such as Hampton Sides, Jon Krakauer, and George R.R. Martin.
As for what influence these authors have had on me, I don’t know exactly. Maybe AI can discern and map the derivatization of writers’ influences in the future in the same way academia looks at student documents to test for originality and proper sourcing.
A book I really liked is Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow and you didn’t ask, but I loved the movieAmerican Fiction.
Tell me about your author persona. How did you come up with it?
I got feedback from family and friends about how best to explain myself. The persona and the expression of it are evolving. I want to share personally to encourage understanding, but not too intimately.
Given your chosen genre, how do you think it has evolved or will evolve in the future?
I think the revenge novel was in the past mostly about the satisfaction of moral justice in the face of a recognized injustice, think The Count of Monte Cristo, but I think as our understanding of mental illness has improved, we recognize that the length of time between cause and effect of action has extended and we can now see that sometimes that action has its roots in some event that happened years before. Also, our sense of morality is less offended by revenge taken for some sorts of heinous crimes such as child abuse, rape, and unnecessary cannibalism.
Other trends I have noticed are female protagonists and the revenge genre in combination with YA and New Adult and Romance.
What led you to want to write in your current genre and how do you think your fresh take will be accepted by fans of the genre?
I witnessed a horrible injustice play out over several years to someone close to me and wanted to avenge it. Thus, was borne the concept of a revenge novel to right the wrong. The fresh take should appeal to the growing number of women readers who like suspense and strong women characters.