What inspired your book?
Actually, I stumbled into it. A few years ago, I started re-evaluating my life. I had been a stay-at-home mother to five children for almost two decades after leaving my corporate job to raise my family. At that point, it hit me. My children would soon be leaving for college. So I started “journaling” my feelings on a laptop. That lasted about a week before I noticed I wasn’t writing about my feelings or goals—I was creating a character that would become my protagonist, Penny Crenshaw. A few months later, in church of all places, my minister mentioned a song title by Bob Dylan, Tangled Up in Blue. At that very moment, I knew I had a story that would become Where the Grass Grows Blue.
Do you have a favorite place to write and do you need total silence to focus?
I wrote my first book when I was still juggling a busy home, so I wrote whenever I had the chance. In the beginning, it was usually after dinner, when the kids were busy with homework, but I’ve been known to pull out my laptop at basketball, lacrosse, and soccer games when there was a break. Having a house full of active children who played multiple sports, I took every “free” opportunity I could get. But the majority of my writing time takes place in my family room in a chair that my husband hates, with my little writing buddy, Harley, my seven pound shih tzu who is secretly plotting my demise, next to me.
Are you working on any new projects?
I’m finishing my upmarket fiction novel, set in the South, of course, that focuses on a tight-knit group of women whose lives are shattered by the shocking death of their beloved friend, Ellen, who has died unexpectedly and under mysterious circumstances. But before they can even process their grief, they stumble across a web of secrets and lies, unraveling Ellen’s perfect life. Now they must rely on each other to find out who the real Ellen Foster was, while grappling with the idea that they never really knew her at all. I’ve also plotted out books three and four.
Southern Sisters Book Club 