1. Of all the stories you could have told, why THIS one?
I think we’ve all been given a few real stories to tell that are ours, to explore and re-explore until we get as much juice out of the telling as the tale as we can. I am fascinated by how people get through the little things in their lives, and how this pile of little tactics and strategies come together to shape a whole person and their world.
Vivi is a survivor. She put her hand out and grabbed onto the most alive part of her world when everything crashed, and held on tight. Planting seeds, trusting her garden to grow, riding the wave of reinvention dug up just enough for her to replant and flourish. It doesn’t always look the way we want it to… but, that’s the fun of living!
2. How do your personal interests and hobbies influence your writing?
I do find that the things that I love and live through always seem to filter into
my work. I am a long time Tarot reader, was wowed by the amazing ability of California soil—with all its desert roots—to grow almost anything and like crazy! I guess I feel I am authority on my own life and feel free to use the many experiences I have been blessed with as starting points for tumbling further along a new timeline. Anything is possible and our timelines of experience shift with our own attention…. But, the timelines that could have been are still there for us to lift up to catch the glint of that other possible sun.
3. What’s your elevator advice (1 line, no more than 30 seconds) for new and/or aspiring authors?
I’ll paraphrase Andre Gide: ‘Look for your own. Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Look for your own. And out of yourself, create. You are the most irreplaceable of beings.’