1. Years ago, at a writers’ conference, an agent actually chased me down the hallway after overhearing my pitch so she could request my manuscript. Too bad that novel was a dud. 2. I almost always reuse teabags at least once. That’s relevant because I often drink tea while I write. It also means I [...]

Someone recently asked which rejection was the worst I’d ever received. I had to think about that for a little while. Over the years, I’ve collected a multitude of rejections. Many of them, especially the lit mag rejections, didn’t faze me at all, while others stung for all sorts of reasons. But I kept coming [...]

My husband and I recently traveled to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a weekend getaway. As we crossed the state border and left Ohio behind us, I remembered something about my second novel — a manuscript I hadn’t  thought about in ages. “Oh my god,” I said. “I set my second novel in Michigan.” While he’d [...]