As a writer, I strive to shed light through my perspective on topics such as travel, parenting, relationships, and cultural adaptation. My interests center around how events, especially exposure to new cultures, inform character development and can improve people, or sometimes devastate them. I am interested in the expatriate existence and the diasporas. 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 a 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 been educated on both coasts. I also lived in Hong Kong three times for 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, but I plan in the future to divide my time between Cabo, where I also have a home and Santa Fe. In my home also lives my white labradoodle Max.
I love to travel and have visited more than 60 countries. Near the top of my list to visit are South Africa, the Galapagos, Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, and Iran. Lately, I have also gotten interested in wine and golf.
The biggest 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. I realized I could benefit from 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 potential fulfillment for both needs.
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 it also draws on experiences in other times and places.
The novel evolved into its own life, and it may become the first in a series featuring the same heroine. Beyond that, I am considering a group of short stories highlighting some oddball 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 doing.
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, and 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 last few 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 had to do a lot of professional reading for my previous 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, or Michelin is able to identify the influence of schools of art on each other historically.
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. I like my space.
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, but 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 a perp’s behavior may have had 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. Most people I know don’t think it’s a horror that child abusers are targets for violence in prisons.
Other trends I have noticed are more female protagonists and the revenge genre being used in combination with YA and New Adult, Fantasy, 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. I wanted the catharsis of righting the wrong. I hope the fresh take will appeal to the growing number of women readers who like suspense and strong women characters.