What cultural value do you see in reading and storytelling?

I believe that storytelling can be transformational. Growing up in a household where prejudice and a certain kind of patriotism was on display daily, my worldview changed completely when I read books like Johnny Got His Gun and To Kill a Mockingbird.

Are there under-represented groups or ideas featured in The Island of Lost Children?

I grew up in a time when Peter Pan was a girl. While I made him a boy in my novel, I was adamant that the cover reflect a Peter Pan who was not blond and white and I incorporated strong girls throughout the narrative. I also revised Barrie’s story to have children form a counter group to Peter’s headed by an American Indian female.

Who are some of your favorite authors you feel were influential in your work?  What impact have they had on your writing?

Although you won’t see it explicitly in The Island of Lost Children, my favorite book is One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Garcia Marquez’s style has inspired how I write, to a certain extent. I also like the work of Isabel Allende, Alice Hoffman, Toni Morrison, Neil Gaiman, and Octavia Butler. They all, in different ways, are imaginative in how they tell stories. I’ve incorporated bits and pieces of their styles when I create my own fiction. One novel’s world building that has never left me is that of Erin Morgenstern in The Night Circus. I hope someday we’ll see more from her.

What literary character is most like you?

I aspire in my old age to become Miss Havisham, sitting in my attic wearing a wedding dress and one shoe. The only difference will be that I’ll be catching up on the shows I missed on Netflix and occasionally leaving to wander the streets and amuse neighborhood children.

What are some day jobs that you have held?  Did any of them impact your writing?

Don’t tell Sarah Palin, but I once worked full time as a community organizer. I also worked for a refugee agency for a time. Most of my career has been in public health—from doing outreach to women in sexually oriented businesses to get them to come in for well women checks to managing cancer and health services research for an academic medical center. Every job has had an aspect that has influenced my writing in one way or another; for example, my time spent with immigrants helped me create the immigrant teenager in my young adult novel.

What’s something fun or funny that most people don’t know about you?

I was once doing outreach with a coworker in a “modeling studio” in the winter in Dallas delivering prevention materials and information on our clinic. A guy came in and asked about the cost of “services.” The employee of the “studio” explained the price list that included her, another woman, but not my coworker or me. Since we were both in thick winter coats and scarves and the women who worked there were showing quite a bit more skin, I doubt if there would have been a question as to who he would have chosen. The guy then explained that he wanted to bring clients there as a holiday gift and could they “give him a receipt.” The woman just laughed.

What is something you want to accomplish before you die?

Locating all those things I left somewhere.

What do you want your tombstone to say?

“She never could find where she left things.”