I saw in your bio that you spent a lot of time growing up in libraries. As an author, what do you think of libraries? I ask because I’m a soon to be librarian. I always wonder if authors like them or if they feel that they detract from potential book sales.
As a reader and as an author, I love libraries. Some of my best reading events have been in libraries. For many, libraries are the only safe haven around. Troubled and neglected kids can be saved by books—and I don’t use those words as hyperbole. I was raised by books, walking the twenty or so Brooklyn blocks it took to get to my neighborhood library branch. Like the steady family I’d wished I had, there it was always there.
For many, libraries are the only way to access books–either because of money or geography. Libraries are the sign of a civilized society.
If you had to Tweet (140 characters or less!) what you write about in your novels, what would you say?
Dark domestic drama informed by the author’s years bartending, working with violent offenders, and her wasted time enamored by bad boys.
If you were going to get a tattoo, what would you get and why? Or, do you already have one? I have a “bookish” tattoo on my back.
My bookish tattoo would read: “The world was hers for the reading.” ― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
If you were in the circus, what would be your act?
Metaphorically, I’d be a juggler—as in recent years I feel the strain of keeping so many balls in the air (writing, promoting, family, occasionally just being me!) but if we are speaking realistically, since I am the clumsiest person that I know, it would be circus clown. Making people laugh is one of the joys of my life. Growing up, telling funny self-deprecating stories was the coin of our family realm.
At what moment in time did you feel like you had really made it as an author?
The first time I got a note from a reader was my moment. Knowing that I’d reached someone (someone not in my family or writer’s group!) and that they’d read my words, and then appreciated my novel enough to reach out, that simply rocked my world. Reading has always been my number one joy and thinking that perhaps I provided that happiness to another person—it can’t get any better than that.
Thank you so much to Randy for being here today! Don't forget to check out her upcoming novel, The Comfort of Lies.
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