Betsy Kepes of North Country Public Radio said, “In SAFEKEEPING, a teen girl walks the length of Vermont. You walked the same route, with your camera, during a rainy summer. How did the story change after your walk?”

Actually I walked through a rainy spring…and that’s important. While I was walking it was damp and chill and the black flies and no-see-ums were swarming so the experience of walking during the same season Radley made her walk was vital to understanding how it might feel. I’m a recreational walker. I love to walk. But walking alone, along a busy highway, in towns and in the long stretches between towns with only my own thoughts, discomforts, and paranoia to keep me company had a profound impact on the emotional line of the book. Two friends, librarian Sandy King, and fellow author Liza Ketchum, joined me for parts of the walk. Their presence altered my perception of “the walk” in such a way that I knew I had to take Celia, a character who, in early drafts, did not enter the narrative until Radley reached Canada, and move her in earlier, much earlier, than I originally intended.

Books and the Shadows they cast

SAFEKEEPING arrived at its pub date while I was out of the country.

Now I am home and the book I have tended and nursed, loved and questioned, cut and restored and cut again, is like a seasoned leaf, and you, readers, are like the sun pouring through it, casting shadows of the work into the world.

Thank you to all the hardworking people who have brought this book into being. Thank you to all the  generous readers who now give it life.

The Library Jewel wanted to know if I have a typical writing routine.

I do have a fairly regular routine. Because my brain seems to function the most efficiently in the morning, I’m usually at my desk by 7am. I remain here until noon and return at 1pm for another one to two hours. By 3pm my writing is beginning to get sloppy. Any work done after 3 is usually deleted or dramatically revised the following morning. So I often call it a day by mid-afternoon. Most of my evenings are filled with reading, either research or pleasure, though even pleasure reading usually has an element of research in it.

The cat on my lap believes he is my muse and is never far from me while I work.

Do you like to read your own books?

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While I’m working on a new book I read it over and over. When I’ve finished the book I’ll read it once more because it has such a different feel when it’s bound and in its final state. But after that I am unlikely to re-read any of my books unless I’m called to speak about them.

For one intense “moment” in my life all of my attention is focused on the book I’m working on. And then that “moment” passes and I am far more interested in what comes next.

Enemies of Sleep

Deadlines careen across the crowded room of a writer’s consciousness.

When there are several deadlines in motion at once they sometimes crash into each other. This is not always a bad thing. Occasionally such a collision leads to an epiphany.

The little traffic controller of the brain, though, is kept busy day and night, night and day, writing up accident reports.