I'm a realist in my writing, as well as my art. I don't have as much imagination as many other writers—a handicap (or strength) that comes partly from my training (Ph.D., University of Illinois) and experience as a mental health researcher/evaluator and program developer. I'm also a flâneuse—a female observer-wanderer. So, I watch, and observe. And listen. That's where the meat of my writing comes from.
But I’m also a sucker for happy endings. I find enough that depresses me about real life, but seek no catharsis by writing about it. I want escape, entertainment. I don’t strive to enlighten. Not consciously, anyway, but because my previous training has given me a bias, I’m interested in the inner lives of characters, including the passages they go through.
As an author of love stories, I’m inspired by Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell and their awesome feminist heroines. So, I tend not to rely on broad shoulders and heaving bosoms. Instead, I go into protagonists' thoughts and emotions, their conflicts and their joy, their struggles to reach balance and grow. My novels deal with insecurities and disappointments, love/hate relationships with parents, characters who seem to behave out-of-character, and even life events not typically included in romantic fiction.
