I grew up in a small town in Central Massachusetts. In addition to the fact I lived amongst many trees and next door to the lake, there is a lot of history and mystery to that part of New England. Half my hometown was turned back into forest when the state decided to build the Quabbin Reservoir. Lots of fodder for one's imagination.

I can still smell the electric burn of my father's blue typewriter from where it sat on the dining room table. Even before I knew how to fit the words together into a sentence, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Like my dad. In that same dining room was our stereo, where I would beg my parents to play the record of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. Or Annie. Either way, I had a story to act out. Whether it was the one I saw in the movie theater at age seven and wanted desperately to be in... or my own melodrama I crafted to the strings of the Russian ballet, I enjoyed creating and telling a story on a stage I made with the proscenium archway that divided our dining and living room. Soon enough I was allowed to type out these stories on the electric blue typewriter and eventually my own computer.

I came up with the idea for my current novel 15 years ago, about three different women who live in the same house in different decades from WWI to the present.

My desk is my dining room table. I have a desk in a room that I label an office. But I always come to my dining room table in the morning to drink my coffee and write every morning. The actual desk is just a collection of paper and random objects.