"The Sphere of Time" had its first incarnation five years ago as "Verses," one of my first short stories. The inspiration for it came from the experience of two dear family friends, a husband and wife who were facing the wife's terminal illness. Her husband was some twenty years her senior. I was profoundly moved by their constant and deep commitment to each other and the way in which they both faced the fact that her time was running out.

It can be difficult to write stories based on truth because you worry about exploiting the experiences of others, especially as they go through their most challenging times. I felt that this couple's story needed to be put on the page and shared because of their courage and because of the unique perspective that the husband in particular had on the issue of mortality. He was a professor of physics, and during his career had been particularly fascinated with the study and nature of time. For me, the idea of bringing an abstract/theoretical understanding of the nature of time into conjunction with the hard-and-fast issue of death was intensely compelling.

"The Sphere of Time" went through many versions before settling into this final one. As with all stories, the characters developed personalities and backgrounds of their own, but I felt that the final result got as close as it could to what I'd hoped for it.

"The Sphere of Time" was published in October 2013 by the Kenyon Review, in their online edition. I've also included the audio file of my reading of the piece, which appeared in KROnline with the printed version.

"Dandelion Wish" is a short story that grew out of an incident from family history. A nosy neighbor advised a young new mom, whose baby had been born early and had to stay in the hospital, that she shouldn't buy baby clothes until she had the chance to "see if it lives." The (probably) unintentional nastiness of that comment struck me as the perfect seed for a story. The young mom in "Dandelion Wish," her own mother and the nosy neighbor are all fictional representations who took on personalities of their own. It was great fun to watch them develop and go along for the ride.

I've remained fascinated with the characters in this story, whose lives extend well beyond the pages here, and am exploring using the story as a jumping-off point for a novel that takes place in the late 1950s. The young mom unintentionally becomes an member of the vanguard of emancipated women, as she raises her child (who *does* make it home from the hospital) without help from a husband. I was born in the late '70s and grew up in a time when the idea of women's equality, though still not fully realized, was taken much more for granted. I find it fascinating to look back at earlier generations and what they experienced. The mother in this story ended up on an entirely different adventure than the one she had planned for. Her story intrigues and inspires me, and I hope to get it more fully onto the page in a longer form.

"Dandelion Wish" was published in March 2015 by Glassworks Magazine.

"Great Blue Heron" is a short story that developed out of a piece I wrote in high school.

I don't often write from the perspective of children, but in this case I decided to use a young narrator (age 13) who can't fully understand what's really going on with the main character, "the woman with birds in her head." His innocence, to me, provided the best view of her torment, and added extra tension to the story as he tried to cope with a situation totally beyond his usual experience. His innocence also gave him a misplaced sense of responsibility that provided powerful energy for the narrative.

I've found in writing stories that often the first seed of inspiration has to gestate for a while before I can put it on the page, and that very often it needs to combine with a couple of other elements, for instance a particular setting, a new character, or an object I hadn't thought of, before it turns into a story. In this case, the missing piece emerged when my husband and I spent time in the Adirondacks two summers ago. That setting of woods, faded small towns, blue sky and tannin-filled streams became the perfect element to join with my original idea, and the story grew from there.

"Great Blue Heron" was published in June 2015 by Bluestem Magazine.

This is my second complete novel and my first experiment with historical/literary fantasy. My husband and I were traveling in Spain this past summer and visited the Church of St. Toribio, believed to house the largest extant fragment of the True Cross. We aren't Catholic, but that was one of the most powerful religious experiences I've had. You could feel how the centuries-old church had been built because of a community's faith and devotion.

Over the course of our time in Spain, I learned more about St. Toribio: how he was canonized because of his journey to Jerusalem to retrieve the fragment of the True Cross, and how his bones later became holy relics in their own right. I became fascinated with the idea of a human being, who lived a by-and-large ordinary life, becoming sanctified and remembered as the next thing to a god. The idea for "Circle House" grew out of that, as I sketched a human woman who performed a great act of sacrifice and was later remembered as a goddess. The action of "Circle House" takes place several centuries after her death, when the reality of her life has long been forgotten and even her priests - some of them, at least - can't be sure she ever existed. I decided to give that woman a unique and rather magical mental ability, and to give the same ability to my present-action protagonist, who is one of the Goddess's priests. The geography and appearance of my fictional country, Namora, are taken directly from Spain, specifically Galicia, Asturias and Castile y Leon.

A quick synopsis of the book: Ribas Silvaikas, a low-ranking priest from a backwater village, receives a summons to meet with Kunin Galvo, the high priest of Namora. When Ribas responds to the summons, in theory to receive compensation for long-ago injuries done to his village, he finds himself caught up in a high-stakes game of power and treachery in which his country’s future hangs in the balance. Galvo sees Ribas as a useful playing piece, but Ribas has a power of his own: a rare and dangerous ability that lets him enter the minds of others and change them virtually any way he chooses. As he sees his country placed under the multiple threats of invasion from outside and corrosive greed and ambition at home, Ribas must decide whether to use his gift to try to protect what he loves – even if it means risking his life and confronting the past he has tried to bury. As he struggles with the choices and burdens of his gift, he doesn’t know that the Goddess he serves as a priest was once a real human woman with the same gift, deified when she sacrificed herself to ensure her people’s survival. He has never fully believed in the Goddess’s legend, but even if he knew the truth about her, he would find it no easier to choose to be a god.

While my first complete novel, "To Love a Stranger," took about seven years to finish (at least mostly finish), the first full draft of "Circle House" came together in about three months. Writing it had its frustrations, but overall I've never had so much fun with any project. I look forward to going back to that fictional world and seeing what other ideas it might spark.

The short story "Ivory-Bill Sighting" was inspired by the experience of an amazing and brave artist friend who has spent much of her life pushing back against physical infirmity, creating beautiful art and bringing important messages about the environment and sustainability to the world.

As often happens with stories, I found that this piece didn't go where I initially thought it would. My protagonist was originally supposed to see a hummingbird, but the mythical ivory-billed woodpecker appeared in the first paragraph and wouldn't be dislodged. Sometimes you have to run with the details. In this case, I was glad I did: the story ended up being about lost creatures, lost souls, and the hope that emerges in spite of dark circumstances. I don't know if any other bird would have been as appropriate as one that came out of legend.

"Ivory-Bill Sighting" was published in November 2015 by Helen: A Literary Magazine.

"To Love a Stranger," my first completed novel, went through about seven iterations (partial and full) and at least as many different titles before arriving at its current form. The book grew out of my training as a classical musician and my experiences of the backstage world of the classical symphony. I wanted to capture some of the vivid and larger-than-life characters I knew, and also translate the intense and often rapturous experience of hearing and making music to the page.

A quick synopsis: Sam Kraychik and Jeannette Reilly meet in the fall of 1986. Both are beginning their first professional jobs with the Richmond Symphonic Artists, a small struggling orchestra. Sam is passionate and assertive while Jeannette is quiet and withdrawn, but they connect through their love for music. Sam is gay, estranged from his parents because of this, and struggling with the illness of his former partner, Gil, who has AIDS. In Jeannette, Sam thinks he sees a way to make himself into what he "should" be. He knows who he is, but can't accept it.

Within a year, he and Jeannette are married and Jeannette is pregnant. The marriage falls apart as Jeannette runs up against Sam’s secrets. After her daughter’s birth, Jeannette abandons Sam and the baby. Sam, left alone, finally faces his own truth. Meanwhile, Jeannette finds she can’t forget her old life. When she returns to Richmond to confront Sam, the two face each other honestly for the first time. Individually and together, they learn about fear, truth and love, and forge a new connection for their daughter’s sake.

Before I began "Stranger," I had no intention of getting seriously into creative writing, though it was something I had always loved to do. Initially I thought I was going to write just the one book (and I thought it was going to be easy - !). As I learned more about the craft of writing, and cut my teeth on this first incredibly difficult and incredibly rewarding project, I realized what a deep hold the work really had on me. Now, eight years later, writing is the one thing I most want to do with my life.

"To Love a Stranger" was a finalist for the 2015 Schaffner Press Music in Literature Award. As yet it's unpublished. In its current form, I feel I've gotten the best combination I can of my first fresh passion for the project and the more mature sense of craft I've developed over the years.

I've included the first thirty-one pages here (two complete chapters), and I do hope someday to see the full book in print.

"Unraveled Souls" is a short story that came out of a small incident: my husband deciding to put his old electric keyboard out with the trash one night. Both he and I are musicians, and it felt strange to us to leave the keyboard out in the rain for the trash truck to pick up in the morning. I remember him saying goodbye to it as we went back into the house.

For several months, I played with the idea of writing a story from the trash collector's viewpoint: how that person might have found the keyboard and maybe wondered about its owners, or had some significant experience because of that one strange item of garbage. In the end, though, the story that ended up on paper was quite different. My protagonist's wife turned out to be a knitter, and the project she was knitting on page one turned out to be a baby blanket. I hadn't planned on either of those details, but they came into the story, and the plotline then wove itself around them.

"Unraveled Souls" was shortlisted for Reed Magazine's 2014 John Steinbeck Award for short fiction, and was published by Reed Magazine in May 2015.

The short story "A Funnel of Time," my first serious foray into magical realism, was inspired by a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald (Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise, by Sally Cline). I've been fascinated with the Fitzgeralds, especially Zelda, since reading The Great Gatsby in high school. When I read the Cline biography this past spring, I decided to experiment with a story in tribute to Zelda's experience.

I found it both challenging and moving to read about a woman who didn't conform to the 1930s standard of femininity, who struggled every day to hold onto her sense of identity as a person and an artist, and who was subjected to rough and poorly-understood psychiatric treatment in an effort to force her to fit into the mold of ideal wife and mother.

I didn't want to write a story only about Zelda, though, since there have been many such, so I experimented with linking her narrative to the narrative of a present-day fictional protagonist. My protagonist Mari has been placed in one of the same mental hospitals where Zelda was treated (Sheppard Pratt). The goal for Mari's treatment is to make her let go of her memories of abuse by her father. In the story, Mari and Zelda are able to communicate with each other through the hypothetical "funnel of time," supporting each other as they hold onto their individual truths.

"A Funnel of Time" was published in December 2015 by Luna Station Quarterly, a journal of speculative fiction by women.