I remember the day I came up with the idea for HER SUMMER WITH THE MARINE. I was on the phone with my friend Paula, talking about how every book idea had been done to death. And having written over 50 books (at the time), a lot of those done-to-death stories had been done to death by ME. LOL! I longed to do something fresh and interesting, and that day I came up with the fresh, unusual aspects of Ellie and Finn’s story. But at its heart, HER SUMMER WITH THE MARINE is the story of a woman coming home, meeting up with the boy – who is now a man – who’d been her high school nemesis, and learning that everybody grows up and time really can heal all wounds – if we let it. It’s also a story about sexual attraction. Finn and Ellie had been in each other’s social sphere the whole way through twelve years of public school education. It’s only when he returns home after ‘finding himself’ as a marine, and she returns home a well respect advertising executive, that they realize their competition might have been a bit more about unrequited romantic feelings than…

My birthday is April 22. The year I turned twenty-two, I was so impressed with the fact that I was turning twenty-two on the twenty-second that I set out to make my birthday a national holiday – or at the very least a local one – greatly annoying my older sister. Now, there was nothing special about me. I was a single legal secretary with no reason to get her name in the church bulletin, let alone the local paper, let alone a national anything. But I really liked to have a good time. Who doesn’t at twenty-two? I wasn’t a bad kid. I wasn’t even wild or deliberately obnoxious. The problem was I hated to be bored. So I wasn’t surprised eight years later, when I turned thirty and threw a major hissy fit. My husband said, “What is wrong with you?” I said, “I’m bored and not doing anything I want to do with my life.” He said, “What do you want to do?” and I said “Write.” And he said “So write.” Who would have guessed that two simple words would not only stave off boredom for the next _ lots of years.. but also start a…

My birthday is April 22. The year I turned twenty-two, I was so impressed with the fact that I was turning twenty-two on the twenty-second that I set out to make my birthday a national holiday – or at the very least a local one – greatly annoying my older sister. Now, there was nothing special about me. I was a single legal secretary with no reason to get her name in the church bulletin, let alone the local paper, let alone a national anything. But I really liked to have a good time. Who doesn’t at twenty-two? I wasn’t a bad kid. I wasn’t even wild or deliberately obnoxious. The problem was I hated to be bored. So I wasn’t surprised eight years later, when I turned thirty and threw a major hissy fit. My husband said, “What is wrong with you?” I said, “I’m bored and not doing anything I want to do with my life.” He said, “What do you want to do?” and I said “Write.” And he said “So write.” Who would have guessed that two simple words would not only stave off boredom for the next _ lots of years.. but also start a…