As the author, how would you describe your books?
All of my stories come from my life experience, but I have made different use of that experience for each, depending on the reason I wrote it. A MOUTH FULL OF SHELL is very autobiographical. It documents the experience of baby boomer women breaking into male-dominated careers with no role models to guide them through the tangle of office politics. Somewhat feminist and historical, A MOUTH FULL OF SHELL is about growth and learning to have the courage to fight for your right to be yourself, while at the same time maintaining a certain amount of social decorum. It's about how the people around us can, to an extent, destroy us or make us successful. It's about the joys and heartaches of living in a small town; about a city girl's adjustment to that. It's about love, and how people in love can have very different view points and still learn from each other. The heroine, journalism professor Dr. Betsy Craig, likens life to a hard-boiled egg. Sometimes when you bite into the good part, you get a month full of shell. At the beginning of the story, she believes she has to gracefully swallow the shell and go on. As the book progresses, from her interactions with the man she loves, Todd Baker, the mysterious Army officer Col. John Meisters, the bombastic German orchestra conductor, Johann von Steinholtz, fellow professor Ken Josylin, and a good colleague named Andrea, Betsy learns that she may choose to swallow the shell, or she may choose to spit out, right into the faces of the people trying to make her eat it, if need be. The course of action is up to her.

SNAP ME A FUTURE has fewer feminist overtones. It is much less autobiographical, but still very much about subjects I love, art and photography, and set where I’ve lived for twenty years, New Mexico. A suspense/thriller/romance, SNAP ME A FUTURE is about facing one’s own fears and learning to trust another person. Shot and seriously wounded by the subject of an investigative story she was writing for a Midwestern newspaper, the heroine, Shelby has run from newspaper work to the safety of the public relations office in a New Mexico Arts Mall. The editor of the local paper, Pete Martinez, invites her to come work for him as an arts reporter. Encouraged by friends, she takes the offer. One day while covering a story, she comes upon a man looting an Indian Pueblo. Grabbing her, he holds a knife to her throat. He will release her only if the man she loves, Benjamin Keith, pulls the looter’s get away truck out of a snow drift. Can Shelby conquer her terror and think fast enough to save herself and Benjamin Keith? Or will another weapon ruin her life forever? As I said, this plot is definitely non-autobiographical. I have never been kidnapped, shot, or even threatened while doing a journalistic assignment.

THE COOK’S TALE came from another kind of experience—indirect observation. We have all known someone who aspired to something, but wasn’t quite talented enough to do it big-time. Bitterly, they did it in a small way in a small town. That’s Polly, the heroine of THE COOK’S TALE. The outcome for her is based on what I’ve on several occasions seen happen to those kind of people. Polly’s outcome is pretty grim, as can often happen in those cases. THE COOK’S TALE also updates a story by the same name in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” it’s a fragment of a story, presenting just a plot and no real characterization. Scholars argue as to whether there’s more to it that got lost, or whether Chaucer wanted to offer his readers a stark, cautionary tale. I decided he had a cautionary tale in mind and fleshed out a character to fit his plot?

Can you tell us the behind-the-scenes story about how your work came into being? What was the germ? How did the characters come to life? Is there a character who still lives inside of you?
Each came about differently. Some of the incidents in A MOUTH FULL OF SHELL happened to me or people I knew, and all the characters are either composites of, or real people, I have met. The carryings on of these real people, positive and negative, danced in my head for many years, making interesting memories. But I had no idea how to gather them into a book. Then I read an article in a trade paper about a college professor who had been given a tenure track contract, but her boss had decided before he hired her, he didn't want to tenure her. Somehow she had found out about this. That incident became the germ, though I modified its circumstances. After that, the people fit nicely into a plot. They weren't hard to bring to life, because with each, I sat down with a list of questions. What's the character's name? What does he she look like? Who are enemies, friends? What does this person like or dislike, etc.? As I answered, I pictured the various people I wanted to use and wrote down their characteristics. Then as I wrote, I modified them to fit the story. That was the toughest part. Some of the incidents I chronicle happened over several years in real time. I had to make them happen quickly. That meant letting go of the literal reality, and substituting an imaginary timeline, so to speak, speeding up events, eliminating others, and I had to do this while keeping my people in character. For example, sometimes in real life, I didn't know why a person did something. However, characters need motivation. When I had that problem, I would list several reasons why such a person would exhibit a certain behavior, and chose one that fit the fictional circumstances. The incidents and people became more and more fictionalized, and soon, just the core of the original person was left in each character. Once I caught on to how to create that imaginary time, twisting and turning the real events became like putting together an intricate three-dimensional puzzle or sculpture. THE COOK’S TALE developed from this point. Polly is loosely based on a person I knew who was a hometown singing star. He got it into his head that he was going to make it to the Metropolitan Opera by winning the annual auditions. He didn’t, and came home bitterly to work for his father and sing in the church choir. She is also based on a woman I knew who desperately wanted to marry. She was poor, so she flung herself at anybody she thought might raise her status. A rather charming snake slithered up and promised to marry her. He bought her a ring that looked like it belonged in The Smithsonian. She broke up with him. He told her to keep the ring, so she tried to sell it. What happened next made her either the laughing stock, or the object of a pity party, depending how you felt about her. Their relationship is the basis of THE COOK’S TALE’S plot, with some twists and turns. I set the scene in New Mexico because it is a colorful place, and I know it well. Finally, there's SNAP ME A FUTURE. The only thing related directly to me in its plot and characters is the fact that I’ve had fear I had to stare down, just like everyone else on the planet. I got the plot out of a book, chose a theme that I thought would work with it, and created characters to bring that theme to life. They are very loosely based on folks I know. The New Mexico settings are more or less real, but they are disguised. The story’s ‘bad guy’ digs up Indian ruins. Having seen the heart-rending results of such activity, I do not want to give anybody a chance to loot a real site. So Shelby lives in a make believe own, on a make believe street. Elements of Shelby’s environment can be found across New Mexico but the only truly thing real is Sam, the Setterdor. And if you want to know who or what he is, you’ll have to read the book.

Can you tell us something about you as a writer, i.e. when you started writing, what's your creative process is like, what inspires you, etc.?
I've always written. When I learned my letters, I would make my mother spell words so I could write down sentences. I was one of those kids who always got rejected from the school newspaper or creative writing magazine. Unfortunately, I had a family member who couldn't stand reality, particularly unpleasant reality. If I created a kid who was sassy or didn't want to do her homework, the person made me strike that out of my story. My teachers would slap me down for writing things that were too sweet. Being so young, I lost confidence in myself as a fiction writer, because I didn't have the sense to ignore the person who was blocking me. I became a journalist and teacher—a profession I share with my heroine Betsy—and this was fulfilling, but something im me still wanted to write fiction. Finally in my mid-thirties while teaching at a university, I showed some flat characters to a friend who was the head of the theater department. Very gently, he drew me into the shaping process. I realized I had simply become afraid to put an honest thought on paper. From there, I simply refined my style. The old joke about writing 50,000 words of garbage is true. It took about 7 years to write A MOUTH FULL OF SHELL. Five of those were spent learning my craft and finding my particular voice. During that time, I discovered something about the way I use the creative process. I work in layers, with a character in mind, I put him/her into a plot. Then I go back and fill in the character's motivation. Finally I fill in the locality. Years of editing audio tape as a radio journalist, and a good ear for language—I'm fluent in German— gave me a good ear for dialogue. I use lots of it. I start with character analysis and plot outline. Then I figure out how to show what the character is doing rather than telling it. If that doesn't work, I find a way for a character to tell another something. That's when my characters really begin to interact. THE COOK’S TALE and SNAP ME A FUTURE came together faster. THE COOK’S TALE is short, and SNAP ME A FUTURE came out in a stream of words, loosely controlled by plot outlines and character analysis. The work on them was more in the editing process than grinding out the story.

What inspires you?
The people I meet. I particularly like the tricky ones; the lovable person with the hair-trigger temper, or the hard worker who ends up a control freak. These are a challenge to create, though they are by nature multidimensional with lots of room to grow. I definitely work on Aristotle's theories. Each book has a thesis (or status quo), an antithesis (a problem introduced), and a synthesis (conclusion or working out.) Each chapter of any of my books also has these features. They drive the plot and characters. Each book and chapter also has a special kind of climax. This is not a thrilling ending, but a turning point, after which the action can only go one way. For example, in Romeo and Juliet, the climax actually comes when Romeo kills her cousin Tybolt. Before that, her father tells his servants that Romeo is a nice boy and can't help the stupidity of his family. At this point there is a chance for the lovers. After the murder, Juliet's dad has no choice but to turn against Romeo, with disastrous consequences for all. It's this sort of climax I always use someplace in each chapter or in the whole story, being aware of these elements really help me drive plot and character.

How do you keep a balance between family, work, and your writing?
I haven't got a family. I have lots of friends, and somehow we all just bob and weave around each other. I don't know how we do it. Sometimes that's what friendship's about. You support each other and don't even know how.

Can you tell us something about you as a person?
I was born in Chicago, raised in New Jersey/New York, and finally landed at an airport in northern New Mexico. I love to travel and have been to many parts of the US and Canada, China, the Caribbean, and Europe. I enjoy cooking, and I am also an art photographer. I like music of all kinds and cities of all sorts. I love to read.

If you had a chance to be mentored by one author (living or dead), who would you choose and why?
Ernest Hemingway. I love the brevity and clarity of his style. Then again, the unknown person or persons who wrote Beowulf and the Lay of Sigurd in the Middle Ages might be good mentors for their alliteration, rhythm, and metaphors. So might Homer, for the Iliad more than the Odyssey. I loved the relationship between Agamemnon and Achilles. Then, there's Robert Frost and Carl Sandberg, who pack powerful descriptions and ideas into little passages. F. Scott Fitzgerald could come up with some wonderful characters. Thomas Wolf sure knew how to describe a city, as did Sinclair Lewis. I can't pick just one. That's sort of like eating potato chips, isn't it?

Despite the wisdom that says you can't take it with you, if you could take four things with you when you leave this world, what would they be?
I'd take my dogs
I'd take my cameras and darkroom
I'd take my CD's and records
I'd take my friends

What is your view of publishing? What opportunities does it provide for you and for other authors? What do you think is the future of publishing?
I have had a very good experience with publishing and POD. I’ve honestly found that people still prefer to hold a book in their hands rather than read it on the web or print it out. Perhaps that will change. Perhaps not. The low overhead of e-publishing and Print-on-Demand lets publishers take a chance on new people and books that are a little bit different. So if people are willing to risk exploring these new formats, they’re in for a good read.

What other published works do you want us to know about?
I'm also a playwright and have had two plays produced in my home town. The first is called Or Are You Cinderella, and it's an adaptation of the old fairy tale. Seeing a production of that when I was about 5 hooked me on theater, by the way. The other play is about a young woman who survives a plane crash. It's called A Peck of Dirt. My skit about aliens coming to earth in the 1950s, A New Delight, was produced in Manhattan in soho by a small group called The Saturday Players. Flying saucers are a big thing in New Mexico. Everybody knows the stories of the little man they found in Roswell about 1948. In 1950, there was supposedly a saucer crash in Hart Canyon, right near where I live. Do I believe in flying saucers? Oh, why not? It really doesn’t matter. Making up an alien from outer space, based on nobody I knew was tons of fun. As far a other writing, I’m the program director and morning classical music host for KSJE FM, Public Radio for the Four Corners. You can hear the station at 90.9-FM, or on the web at www.ksje.com Use Media Player and click listen live. I do a show called Roving with the Arts, which includes music, arts documentaries, and arts interviews. A segment of that is Write On Four Corners, a book show featuring authors from New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona.

What projects are you currently working on?
I'm working on a children’s story called “Belle’s Star.” It is the story of a little abused puppy that must learn to trust people. I designed it to give abused children a way to express their feelings about what happened to them.

Anything else you'd like to share with us?
I guess my final comment to anyone who wants to write would be to go for it. If you have a person in your life who is pushing your characters in a direction you don't want to go, or is squelching them, get away from that individual. Find critics who will respect what you want to do, and help you get there. While it is not okay to whine and defend yourself in critique with "Well, what I tried to do was...", it is imperative that you say loud and clear, "What I'm trying to accomplish is..." Truly helpful critics will respect that and you'll have a joyous relationship with them. Also, don't be scared of editors. They are usually sensitive people, if you give them a chance to be. I only met one in my life who was impossible to work with. He had a smalltime news department in a tiny station in a miniscule town, and he was a big fish in a small pond. But if you're polite to an editor and explain what you're trying to say, they'll listen. One of my most cherished moments in writing is the time I published a poem in our local paper and the editor didn't like my choice of a word. He suggested one that didn't quite fit, and when I explained why, he worked with me for a solid hour to get what we needed. What a rush.