I have been thinking up stories in my head ever since I was a kid. In the fourth grade I won an award for a story and promised myself that someday I would write more. Don’t ask how many years it took me to fulfill that promise to myself. Let’s just say, it takes some of us a while.

Good question (and yes, I know that’s not a complete sentence). Growing up in St. Louis, I was lucky to have the sweetest, funniest, and most diligent German grandparents, who told me countless Grimms’ Fairy Tales at bedtime. As immigrants, they were full of stories about growing up in Europe, the families they left behind, and the fallout from the first world war that brought them to the United States.

My dad’s family were British and had an amazingly sarcastic sense of humor, something I’d like to think I continue. As far as living in the Southwest, not many novels have been centered in this area, except historical Westerns, so there are aspects regarding life here that are novel (not to make a pun), but still very recognizable as life in the United States.

Another good question. Humor is the major reason I write. I try to find that sweet spot between love, and its emotional complexities, and laugh my fanny off over everything that happens to us as human beings. I should mention at this point that Mel Brooks is my hero. Don’t laugh (ha), I’m serious.

Oh, you would have to ask that. Every writer’s sensitive spot. That’s like asking someone how much weight they put on this month. Just joking. I am finally getting back to writing after living in Germany for four years. I am never moving again. My plan is to write at least three hours a day to begin with and then add a few hours more to that, Monday through Friday. As to whether I’m a plotter or a pantser, I’m truly a hybrid. If an idea comes to mind halfway through the novel that’s better than the original chapter I’d planned, I will jump ship and swim to the rescue helicopter.

Fredrick Backman is one of my favorite authors, as well as Kate Quinn, who truly does her homework when it comes to researching the time about which she is writing. I admire that, as I admire Mr. Backman’s sense of humor. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction. The one that really fascinated me was, “The Great Mortality” by John Kelly. It is about the plague in the fourteenth century and the fallout and realignment of society in the aftermath. It really hit home, after the Pandemic.

The overarching one is that it is far better to laugh about most things than it is to dwell on the unhappiness you may have experienced. When life throws you a mess, roll up your sleeves, clean it up, figure out what you’ve learned from it, and don’t let your pride get in the way.

Carefully. I never inject humor into the loss of a human life. I will joke about the loss of material possessions, and most definitely the investment in social status and the false assumptions we make regarding other people, but not about human life.

That I’m picky about certain things, in this case my writing, and I will stick with it until I am satisfied that it’s right.

Ps. I can hear my husband and children in the background, laughing and saying, “Yeah, we never knew you were picky.”

My husband and I were taking ballroom dancing lessons, and many of the characters and incidents came out of those experiences. Dancing frees your spirit. Seriously. There wasn’t a time that I finished a dance class that I wasn’t a happier person walking back out the studio door. I placed the novel in Scottsdale, Arizona, well, because it’s Scottsdale. Use your imagination.

Probably “The Cha-cha Affair, and “Third Time’s A Charm” would make great romantic comedies. As for the lead actors, for “The Cha-cha Affair, Drew Barrymore would be perfect, and for “Third Time’s A Charm,” Elizabeth Banks would be great.

Moving to Germany for four years. It was a wonderful experience tromping all over Europe.

Despite the pandemic, my husband and I were able to travel extensively. People are the same all over, only with distinct types of cultural habits and stress points. I don’t know how else to explain it, other than to say that regardless of race or culture, we are all far more alike than we are different. Of course, the Germans do have better bread….just joking, but not really.

Nobody was writing anything funny about the Pandemic, number one, and number two, when I was in Germany, I was homesick for Phoenix and my family and friends in the states, so I wrote about them. Given the antics that went on in that novel, names will not be mentioned.

I’m writing a new novel called, “The Tale of the Tucson Almost Angel,” which will be more comedy than romance, but it does involve two characters who have fallen for each other and can’t admit it because they are the most stubborn people imaginable.

It’s been wonderful. Everything is in one place and organized for potential readers to check out. They can read samples of all three novels and click to purchase them on Amazon, if they are so inclined. Additionally, the custom weekly mockups are a godsend, as are the tools I can use to design my own. Spending my time doing the things this site does for me would truly consume my day and impede my writing time. Additionally, whenever I have experienced a problem, the AllAuthor staff has been on it immediately. Thanks for that.

I grew up in a time that was very safe. You could ride your bike all over the neighborhood, come home for lunch, and go back out until dinner, without your mother being charged with child neglect (joke intended). The freedom to wander and spontaneously interact with your neighbors is something my children have unfortunately had little experience with. The biggest thing I miss, though, are my grandparents. They were German immigrants and they ran a tailor shop in the basement of their apartment building, which my sister and I had the run of whenever we visited. We had a blast. Many nights my grandmother would tell us Grimm’s Fairy Tales before we went to sleep. She knew most of them by heart and she was a great story teller.

Ha! I’m laughing at this question. To answer it honestly, I would have to say my favorite place to have coffee is in bed every morning while talking to my husband. It’s our daily ritual.

Yes, my husband and I have been taking lessons for the last six years, and there is not one time when I haven’t come out of a lesson feeling happier. It is the best prescription for mental health I can suggest to anyone, and it’s great for developing and maintaining balance, not to mention the cardio benefits as well. To add a small footnote, all of our instructors have mentioned, at one time or another, that my husband by far the better dancer. I tell them that it must be a Latin thing. My husband is this stocky Sicilian/Spanish guy who is truly Mr. Twinkletoes. If it wasn’t so funny, it would be humiliating, although, come to think of it, something can be both, can’t it?

I like happy endings. Having said that, I tread the line between humorous women’s fiction and comedy romance. It was once hotly suggested by an agent that I quickly figure out which genre I write in, as being on the line was not acceptable. Honestly, I didn’t find her comment all that acceptable either. But we strive for world peace anyway…..

See question number four, above. You have to do your homework when looking for an agent or a publisher that takes non-agented submissions. Small publishing houses are more willing to take on an unknown, first time author. When I submitted to Solstice Publishing, and they made the decision to offer me a contract, I felt like the luckiest woman on the planet. Submitting your manuscript for publication is a lot of work, and it’s not fun. Your first novel is like your first kid, and there you are getting all kinds of feedback about your baby. It doesn’t feel particularly wonderful when someone doesn’t see how beautiful and amazing your baby is. Rejection stings, and even if you have written a masterpiece that will sell millions, you will be rejected many times before anyone accepts your manuscript. This isn’t just a craft, it’s a business. I’m thinking of the famous Corleone quote in “The Godfather” right now.

Five Things starts and ends in Italy, but the bulk of the novel takes place in Columbia, Missouri. I started and ended it in Rome, Italy, because, to me, it is one of the sexiest places I’ve ever been to. Every word spoken in Italian sounds like they are saying, “I love you”, even when they’re angry as all get out.

Taking dance classes has been both challenging and entertaining. As I mentioned, I always feel happier after I dance, and when I feel good, my imagination and sense of humor become unleashed and I start to spin stories in my head. The novel takes place in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I lived in Phoenix for twenty years, so much of the day to day events that take place in the novel are observations about Phoenix.

I am a recovering “pantser’, meaning that I have in the past let the novel go where it wants to. That takes a lot of time to clean up, so I have devised a hybrid style in which I construct a loose plot and keep a record of the scenes as I write them.

Every woman in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Don’t. Seriously, although nothing lasts forever, if you find a good critique group, hold them to your heart. A good critique group will tell you things you might not want to hear, and if more than one of them mentions the same thing, whether it’s a section of text or a character motivation issue, the wise writer would pay attention.

I have a hard time with names, and no, I haven’t named anyone after a family member. My current work in progress is an example of the difficulty I experience with names. I have picked boomer names for my characters, Debbie and Sue, and honestly, I have to change their names. Although Debbie and Sue are quite typical of that generation, they are also boring me to death. I’m sure the right names will come to me, and hopefully I can get a few jokes out of whatever I change their names to.

We recently moved to Germany, and we will be there for the next few years. The move was far more complicated and involved than I thought it would be, and I lost the writing habit in the transition. I have begun, once again, to treat it like an eight to four job, with two fifteen minute breaks and a half hour lunch. It sounds silly, but making out a schedule in the evening for the next day, helps. It’s the only way I can get things done.

I am writing about two recovering alcoholics who grew up next to each other, and are reconnecting in middle-age. They both grew up in North Central Phoenix, so it’s set in Phoenix and it reflects how much the city has changed since the late sixties and seventies. In all honesty, my challenge is in making this funny, as alcoholism can be a touchy subject. The funny part can’t surround drinking, or recovery. That’s what starts to bond the two of them. Their experiences in childhood and their family members are where the jokes are being drawn from.

I love this question. My current work in progress, as I mentioned, is about two late end boomers who have been boom to bust entrepreneurs, so the reader gets a taste of all the ways technology has created and ruined businesses. Another novel rolling around in my head is about a therapist with a short fuse who ends up in Purgatory, due to a road rage incident on the I-10 between Tucson and Phoenix. Don’t ask how I came up with that one.

I found out about AllAuthor from, of course, a fellow author. The website truly keeps me on task and in order. They present a wealth of opportunities to help authors get the word out, with taste and class. They are helping me wade into Twitter, and organize my marketing.