What can you tell us about your new release, Love Is Never Lost? I love a good fairytale. That’s been established (this is the 8th book in my collection!) But not all fairytales are ripe for modern adaption. Some tough ones? The Princess and the Pea…Snow White and the Seven Dwarves…Rumpelstiltskin…with these and many other tales, it’s hard to come up with a good, solid, captivating, modern-day romance angle that lends itself to the structure of the original fairy tale. So I started branching out from conventional fairytales to American folklore, and at the top of the list was The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. It’s an awesome story, to be sure, but it’s hard to avoid a paranormal element when re-writing it, since the Headless Horseman is not only a main character, but a ghost. Now…right next to Sleepy Hollow on the list of popular American folklore, was Irving’s other well-known story, The Legend of Rip Van Winkle. And this one? Well, it immediately got my juices going. In the legend, Rip wanders up into the Catskills, goes bowling with dwarves, gets drunk, falls asleep and wakes up twenty years later. When he walked up into the mountains, it was a year before the American Revolution, and when he walks down, it’s a year after. This MASSIVE change has taken place in New York and he’s missed it all. So, I started thinking about that…about someone losing two decades of their life. And my story, LOVE IS NEVER LOST, was born. In my version, Ripley Van Winkle falls from the top of a lighthouse in 1985, only to wake up from a coma twenty years later in 2005. He has an 18-year-old sister, his former best friend and onetime girlfriend are married, and his parents are in their 60s. Not to mention, the internet, GPS, cell phones, oh my! He has to relearn a whole new world. It was just so much fun to write. What books are currently on your nightstand? I have three remotes on my nightstand, but (shhhh! Don’t judge!) no books! Lately, I’ve been on a streaming binge, and getting all of my stories (and some awesome story inspiration!) from Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Sundance, etc. There are so many amazing shows available right now, I can’t get enough!! Do you listen to anything while you write? If so, what is your audio of choice? Sometimes I do. For this book, I listened to quite a bit of 80s music for the first five chapters, which take place in 1985. “Jessie’s Girl”…”Everybody Wants To Rule The World”…”Don’t You (Forget About Me)”… the list goes on and on. But I only listened to one song occasionally while writing the subsequent fourteen chapters: Neil Young’s “Harvest.” I heard it on a show called “Big Sky,” and the lyrics stuck with me. I even refer to it in Chapter 18! What makes your world go round? Why does it bring you joy? My family. Definitely. During these strange Covid-19 days, I’ve been (mostly) sequestered at home with my husband and two kids, Henry (16) and Callie (13), in Connecticut. And you know? I might be in the minority, but I think I’m actually going to feel nostalgic about it (all of this time spent together) someday. I’ll look back on these days spent at home like a pause, a little haven, a little heaven, even, where I had my beloved family around me all the time. Plus, my parents and brother live nearby, and we’ve been able to see a lot of them over the past year. Everyone had to slow down, you know? I didn’t write as many books. My husband worked from home. My kids often attended school remotely. Sure, there were moments we got on each other’s nerves, but mostly I loved having them around me all the time. Part of me will miss it when our lives return to hectic-normal. What’s in your Nexflix queue? OMG. SO MUCH. My family is headed to Norway for Christmas break 2021 (think snowmobiles, northern lights and dog sledding!) so I have a bunch of Norwegian shows ready to watch. In my “Coming Soon,” queue, I have: “The One,” “Deadly Illusions,” “Who Killed Sara?” and “A Week Away.” LOL! Maybe I’ll come up with a thriller next! What scene from Love Is Never Lost was your favorite to write? Instead of doing an Epilogue at the end, I wrote a four-page Update instead. So, instead of one scene that gives you a glimpse into Rip and Trina’s life, I give the reader the rest of their lives in shorthand, with updates at five, eleven, twenty and fifty years later. My early readers are LOVING this long view into my characters’ futures. And I had the best time imagining it, so it’s a win-win!
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