It was five months after my mother’s death. I was 20 years old, had just finished my sophomore year of college, and was struggling. I decided to attend a grief group at a local hospital in the hopes that it would provide me with some sort of solace or help. What I experienced, instead, was [...]

It all started with the Crab Creek Review back in November 2010 — that was when I first photographed Saucy and Cirrus with one of my fiction publications. From there, we moved on to the South Dakota Review and the American Literary Review. Then Cirrus sat on an Elizabeth Bishop book for his Inkwell photo [...]

Last night was my book launch party. The evening featured cupcakes, wine, chocolate-covered potato chips, and stacks of Living Arrangements copies that grew smaller and smaller as the night wore on. But snacks and book sales aside, I felt so incredibly supported by everyone who came. An old friend (and long-ago fellow writing member) came [...]

I already mentioned that Peter and I were on vacation in California last summer when I got the call that Living Arrangements would be published. But I didn’t share that I came home from that trip to find the apartment filled with purple roses, compliments of my mother-in-law, and this note, compliments of one of [...]

Allow me to share one of my favorite typos in Living Arrangements: Instead of tying her apron strings, my protagonist tied her apron stings. The fact that this typo appeared on the very first page of the story and I never caught it, despite multiple rounds of revisions, is a little exasperating. Actually, it appeared [...]

Look what came in the mail yesterday: an ARC of Living Arrangements! (If you can’t read what it says in the black bar to the left of the plant, I’ll solve the mystery: “uncorrected proofs.”) I knew it would be coming soon, but I didn’t know exactly when and still felt surprised even as I [...]

*Yes, my book will include a short Q&A at the end, as well as a readers’ guide. I already know one book club is planning to read Living Arrangements, so maybe this guide can get some conversation going. And also help me come up with some decent answers in advance (that do not involve my [...]