"The Language of the Night" by Ursula LeGuinn. Essays on creativity & writing that inspire me to be brave.
"Riddly Walker" by Russell Hoban. He creates a future where language has disintegrated & yet I was quickly 'all in'. It challenged me to expand my mind & rewarded me when I did. "Baby Todd and the Stradivarius Violin" by Teresa Kennedy. A multi-generational mystery wrapped in comedy and tragedy by turns. Full of rich, Southern flavor. The rhythm of the language alone is worth the read. "The Clearing" by Alan Arkin. Profound. Funny. Rich. "Roget's Thesaurus" Reading the groupings of words & watching the subtle changes in meaning as the move is a feast to my brain. I will open an edition at random and munch away, filling my mental file cabinets with all the colors I need to create my stories.

Everything. Science Fiction & Fantasy. Mysteries. Historical markers. Biographies. For fun rides, I enjoy the series novels of Charlain Harris, Lee Child, Patricia Cromwell, Colin Cotterill, Julia Spencer-Fleming and I will read anything by Elizabeth Strout, a fine storyteller. Lavie Tidhar's "The Bookman" rocked my world. It's a much shorter list to say what I WON"T read: porn, romance, torture, war.
If I want to be able to dip in and out, I read art books filled with reproductions of the artist work, National Geographic and The New Yorker and the back of the cereal box.
Words give me enormous pleasure.

My very large computer monitor screen.

In-person book signings.

I have two! One is my 'reality' desk and the other is my work table. My reality desk is fairly orderly, with keyboard, monitor, standing files, shelf of organizational tools like post its, stapler, labels and such. Of course there is a pen cup & a container of my favorite gum. My CPU is on this desk, pushed way back with small speakers on top along with a cow vertebrae. On top of my supply shelf is a carved wood statue of Don Quixote standing on a book, a twisted piece of desert "driftwood", and a polished wedge of Brazilian agate. Here is where I type my 2nd drafts, balance my checkbook, use Google for research. Reality stuff. My work table is where I hand write - in a fever - my first drafts. Notes are taped to the wall, post its are stuck on the window, paper is everywhere and there are inspirational rocks on the window sill.

I grew up in the state of Vermont, primarily in the rural areas of Chittenden County. We moved sixteen times by the time I was fifteen and this combined with being the third born of nine children, created an odd tension in me. Always the new kid, the loner out in the world yet, at home, crowded at every turn and struggling to carve out independent space while remaining an accepted part of my family, my tribe, my traveling neighborhood. I became a writer because of this tension. I was equal parts objective observer of the world around me and deeply involved participant in the rich life of a large & messy family. Vermont's woodlands were incredibly important to my spiritual well-being. While dashing through them imagining I was Diana the Huntress, climbing trees, or building rustic cabins, I saturated myself with the smells & sights.

I began creating fiction verbally first as a Storyteller (especially scary stories) when I was 9. First put pen to paper for a piece of fiction at age 11 (Teacher set the coals to flaming by comparing my attempt to capture an old Vermonter's accent in dialogue to Mark Twain). I submitted my first story to Redbook magazine when I was 16 but by that time I had produced several short stories in a Creative Writing class and tons of bad poetry. I also kept a journal, a habit I still have to this day.
I have always been compelled to put things into words. I desperately wanted to learn to play the piano starting at the age of 5. Perhaps, if I had, I would be a songwriter instead of a fiction writer.

When my parents separated and filed for divorce, I was in my late twenty's and was stunned at my emotional reaction to something I had expected since I was twelve. My little girl self was confused, scared, upset, and mystified. I felt such a sense of loss. All of those emotions took me by surprise and I wanted to examine them. So I started digging until I found the little girl that knew something was wrong but did not know what and - as too many children do in a situation like this - she takes responsibility for trying to fix it. In my novel, I expanded on this feeling and projected it into a fictionalized family & setting. To, hopefully, get adult readers re-tuned to how children think, I wrote the entire narrative from inside the mind of the young protagonist. We see & feel everything through her eyes and heart. It is a prayer for adults to remember.

I was motivated by the frustration of receiving many, many rejection letters that stated the reason for the rejection was not the quality of my work but, again and again, that they didn't know how to market it. I found that to be an amazing admission coming from business entities that exist solely to market books. We, the reading public, sorta count on them to bring us good writing - dontja think?

The process. A story idea comes to me in a single intriguing image or an ending or a sound I can't identify immediately. If the idea has power, I find I must know the 'why' of what I am seeing/hearing etc and that question pulls me under. When I can start putting the right words to what I am seeing, it is pure joy and the energy of that joy carries me through.
I have enough confidence now in this process, the joy can flood in with the first image as I know what's next for me: Words!

I am currently working on a collection short stories. They run the gamut from serious to lighthearted, straight fiction to more speculative so my working title is: I Sing in Many Voices. I also have a trilogy in the works. I have completed the first volume and am half way through the second and the third is heavily outlined. It is set well into the future, after natural disasters world wide have changed all human society. But it is not a 'dystopian' story. It is more a 'testament to the human spirit' story. I also have several children's stories cooking and a science fiction novel in the early stages.
I never lack for ideas - just time!