Photo by Peggy O'Donnel
I live in the South Bay of Los Angeles. Despite the houses featured in my books, I don't live in either a 1928 bungalow, a modern glass house with bamboo floors or a Spanish-style villa on the sand. Those houses came out of my imagination, and were inspired by houses I have seen on my walks and drives. I live in a sweet little house with very brightly colored walls. My office is a soft pumpkin. My kitchen is crowne yellow. My bedroom is a mossy green. There are, in fact, no white walls in my house, unless you count the closets, which I don't. I started writing fiction in 2004. I had a revelation one day on a big stage in Anchorage, Alaska. I had travelled there to give the keynote address at a breast cancer event (because one of my previous books was a breast cancer memoir -- The Victoria's Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming and Other Lessons I Learned From Breast Cancer.) There were women there from all over the state. The year before, they had been treated to a keynote address by Dr. Susan Love, breast cancer guru. During the lunch, all I could think about was what I could possibly say that Dr. Love hadn't. Why, out of all those women in that room, was I the one going onto the stage? As I made my way up, I realized that it wasn't WHAT I had to say that mattered. It was HOW I was going to say it. I realized, in other words, that I was a storyteller. My first novel, The Last Beach Bungalow, came out in 2008. It was a thrill! My second novel, The Only True Genius in the Family, came out in February 2009 -- the story of a prodigy painter, her famous photographer grandfather and the mother caught in the middle.) The Threadbare Heart comes out in May 2010. I feel so very grateful to be a 10-year cancer survivor. These 10 years with my sweet husband and our amazing kids have been like a whole world. If you or someone you know has survived anything -- be it cancer, life with a kindergartner, or traffic on the 405 -- than cheers! And I hope you enjoy my stories.