Hi Tess! Thanks for stopping by the blog today. So Im wondering, what can you share about inspirations and character influences in your reading and writing career from some of your favorite books?

When I was eight years old, being of a sensitive and worried nature, I developed insomnia. I stared at the second hand on the small alarm clock next to my bed long into the night, fretting and tired but powerless to fall asleep. On one such night, after waking my mother from what I now know was the much needed and coveted sleep of a mother with young children, she said to me, “From now on, if you cannot sleep, turn on the light and read a book until you feel tired.” ......................So I did.

I’d already developed a love affair with fiction, having learned to read early and was working steadily through the local public library. But there is something about reading in the middle of the night that allows one to fall even more deeply into the story. There are no distractions like dogs barking or doorbells ringing or your mother calling you to supper. And inside those pages I lived entire lives. I crossed the country as a pioneer girl with Laura Ingalls. My heart was broken when Mary went blind. I cried with Jo Marsh when Beth died. I wanted nothing more than for Anne with an “e” to fall in love with the sweet and faithful Gilbert Blythe. Later, the hard lives of Willa Cather’s Swedish prairie girls haunted my dreams.

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