fuonlyknew

When did you decide to become a writer?

It wasn’t a conscious decision. I wrote my first short story when I was six years old, about a rabbit who makes friends with a giraffe. Two years later my parents gave me a small pink, plastic typewriter, and I churned out story after story. I have a colossal, relentless imagination. Even today, stories appear like movies in my head and out comes the laptop. Writing has always been how I process the world. Getting paid for it was a dream come true.

You’ve worked as a journalist and a fiction writer. Which type of writing do you like best?

As a journalist, I loved uncovering facts and weaving them into stories that mattered to people. But my first love is fiction. Historical fiction, to be precise. My mother went back to school when she was thirty and already had four children. She earned her BA, her MA, and then was awarded her PHD the same week that I graduated from high school. She majored in history. Instead of fairy tales, she regaled us with stories about events like the American Revolution, Napoleon’s conquests, and the collapse of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire. She told us about the people involved, not just the “boring history” part. John and Abigail Adams. Napoleon and Josephine. Empress Elizabeth of Austria. The fascination of and love for stories grounded in historical events has never left me.

Where do you get the ideas for your stories?

I’m a history geek. I’ll discover some intriguing, little-known historical nugget, and dive into research mode to find out more about it. Eventually a story begins evolving in my head. My first book found life in Shanghai between the two World Words. It was the only place in the civilized world you could go to without a passport or a visa and just start over. Shanghai was a haven for businessmen, villains, and refugees of all kinds: a perfect setting for a historical thriller.

I usually create fictional characters and drop them somewhere in the riptide of history. They experience actual historical events and interact with real historical figures. My latest book, about Jane Avril, is a departure from that structure. This time I wrote in first person about a real historical character. I call it a “fictional autobiography.”  The book is largely based on her memoirs.

What is the first book that made you cry?

Gone with the Wind. I was eleven when I read it and cried hysterically for days. Then I would put the movie soundtrack on my record player and cry some more.

What authors did you dislike at first but grow into?

Gabriel García Márquez. I hated One Hundred Years of Solitude when I first read it. I read it again five years later and loved it. I’ve read everything he’s written. We were all forced to read Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham in high school, which I detested, but years later I stumbled across The Painted Veil, loved it, and have enjoyed many of his other works.