When I was twelve years old, I wrote a story called THE MICE WHO LIVED IN THE WHITE HOUSE because I grew up in Washington D.C., but in the days before computers. I left my story handwritten in a notebook on the bus and never got it back so that was discouraging. However, I kept writing in journals and hiding them in my room away from my five brothers and it soon became a great way for me to express myself. I found out I was a storyteller. I published my first book when I was 24.

People often ask me this question and I think the answer is different for every writer. For me, my stories often start with setting. If I don’t know where my characters go to sleep or where they play or go to work, it’s hard for me to imagine them living their lives. So a setting can start a story as in ISLAND JUSTICE, modeled on an island I visited as a child. IN MY MOTHER'S HOUSE began with memories of my grandmother’s white clapboard house in New England and to my amazement, grew into a three-generational saga which opens in New York City in the 1880s. But there are lot of other ways that stories get started. A photograph by Lewis Hine, the great child labor photographer of a little girl who worked in a Vermont textile mill prompted me to write the historical novel COUNTING ON GRACE. I wrote THE CASTLE IN THE ATTIC because my son’s beloved nanny was leaving and I was as sad about her departure as he was. Stories start in unexpected ways. The writer has to be alert to the emotional prompts coming from the imagination.

Honestly, I don’t have a favorite. I am often working on more than one genre at a time so while I may be struggling with a memoir for adults, I can switch to a picture book for children which is the closest thing to poetry for me. Taking the time to work in a new form allows my brain to rest and revitalize so that when I return to the memoir, I am more conscious of the vocabulary and of making each word count. I’m happy I’ve been able to write in so many genres.

I don’t have one favorite genre, but I read consciously. For example, I don’t want to unconsciously pick up a writer’s voice or tone, so when I’m writing fiction, I tend to read non-fiction. Before I start a memoir, I read lots of them and then put them aside. I’ve found that if I read fiction while writing memoir, I can learn how to use fictional tools like dialogue and description and time in memoir. I read poetry daily. Non-fiction I take in best by listening to an audiobook.

To Kill a Mockingbird

The memoir I just finished entitled DAUGHTER OF SPIES: WARTIME SECRETS, FAMILY LIES. When you’re writing a fiction, you can make everything up, but when you write memoir, you have to get to the truth of your own life which means peeling away so many of the stories you told yourself growing up. In memoir, there are two voices: the person you were and the narrator looking back with the benefit of hindsight, and those two must be kept separate. It took me a long time to understand that.

I love to go to museums, plays, dance performances (especially because they are non-verbal so they allow my brain to wander while watching movement). I am a creative addict so when I’m not writing I express my creativity through cooking, sketching, taking photographs, knitting. None of these take the place of writing but they keep my creative spirit alive when I’m taking a break from the words on the screen.

My childhood nickname given to me by a brother only 13 months old when I was brought home from the hospital and he couldn’t say Elizabeth. Only family and close friends use that name so I’m going to keep it a secret.

I have just completed a memoir for adults, DAUGHTER OF SPIES: WARTIME SECRETS, FAMILY LIES about my parents' love affair in England during World War II and the complications of their marriage in the politically charged atmosphere of 1950s Washington. While awaiting a publication decision on the memoir, I’ve embarked on my latest work of fiction, a prequel to my popular fantasy novel, THE CASTLE IN THE ATTIC.

Well-rounded characters who have something at stake. The first line of Charlotte’s Web is a perfect example. “Where’s Pa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. A pig is going to be killed. The stakes are very high. You want to keep reading.