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Writing about tragedy is very hard and frequently feels ridiculous to me, and yet, after my first novel was published I was told repeatedly that I had a handle on the subject of grief that few could duplicate. But I didn’t want that gift because the price I’d paid was much too high. Both my best friend and my eldest sister had been killed in separate accidents when I was in my twenties and both deaths had left me in a state of devastation, unable to recover from the idea that both these women had deserved to live while I, an untreated alcoholic who made terrible decisions, should have been the victim. Yes, this was a narcissistic and immature reaction but I was both narcissistic and immature and, until I stopped drinking and went to therapy, I was unable to write about anything beyond my own loss. Writing about tragedy is very hard and frequently feels ridiculous to me, and yet, after my first novel was published I was told repeatedly that I had a handle on the subject of grief that few could duplicate. But I didn’t want that gift because the price I’d paid was much too high.

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New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings. —Lao Tzu

There’s a certain feeling of grief when you finish a novel that has nothing to do with the anxiety and pain of finding a publisher but rather is inspired by the intimate relationships you have established with your characters. It’s even better when your readers miss them and ask about what happened after the book ended, when they vanished into some stage of your creative life, not exactly dead, after all one of them is probably you. One of my novels inspired such attachment I had people at readings inquiring after her well-being at college as if she was real and possibly having a tough freshman year. That was very encouraging but it also reminds me of the nature of this work: you create them, manipulate them, love them and finally shoot them up with massive doses of coma inducing drugs.

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A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. —Henry Adams

I was Mother Nature in kindergarten and a year later, in Ireland, hit across the knuckles with a steel edge ruler because I could not read. In fifth grade I had a teacher, Mrs. Sadler, who trusted me as a bullied child to survive without her intervention. It was a risky decision. My nemesis had intimidated and bribed the rest of the class and even paid a small boy a pound to hit me in the mouth. But Mrs. Sadler saw my potential as a swimmer, an embroiderer, a writer, and made me feel incredibly brave. Sixth grade was awful for any number of reasons, seventh grade chaotic and fun with the entire middle school housed in the National Guard Armory as our building wasn’t ready. The teachers were young, and we gradually became a feral group who terrified the high school students when we were transferred to the top floor when the Guard needed their place back.

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