I love a good first line. The first line from your new release, Our Lady of the Roses, really sets the tone with this first sentence: “He looks like a gnocchi.” Five words, but the reader already has a sense of the tone and a cultural connection. Can you tell me more about the role of humor in the book and the Italian influence?

I love throwing opposites together because it makes a story ripe for laughs. Janetta and Bob, the main characters in Our Lady of the Roses, are 180 degrees apart in temperament, looks, desires, and beliefs. I’m not Italian; I’m mostly Irish with a smattering of German, English, and Welsh, and I was once selling my novels at a craft show, and I got to talking with the older woman selling jewelry next to me. We started talking about travels, and she told me she was Italian and had just came back from Italy. I told her I’d been to Italy and loved it. I then shared that I’d just come back from Ireland. She laughed and said, “You know I was a bit of an Italian snob, thinking that no place is as nice as Italy, but I went to Ireland last year, and I had to shut my mouth. I loved Ireland.” Like her, Janetta is a bit of an Italian snob, thinking no one has more style, elegance, and culture than the Italians, and she dismisses Bob for being a “gnocchi” a big, white, doughy blob. As the story progresses and Janetta tries to make Bob over, we come to learn that she is the one who needs a makeover because she’s all style and very little substance. 

Continue reading →