Student life suited me. At the age of fifteen I left California for Switzerland and in between getting kicked in and out of several schools, I was able to make it almost all the way through. But not quite.

So off to England I went. After three “A” levels in English, classics and ancient history, I was accepted into my dream university—London School of Economics. And this time I graduated with honors in 1990.

After spending a summer on the beach pondering the Peace Corps, I quickly ditched the idea when my old boyfriend came back to town. We left for New York then off to Italy where I taught creative writing and English at the International School in Genova. We then moved to Paris for two years and it was there that I worked on my first novel. And worked on my first novel. And actually finished my first novel.

In 1999 we returned to California and I got a job writing about other places for a travel magazine. When the dot.com craze took over, I jumped ship and became an associate editor for a travel website that was soon to tank. But before it did, I got pregnant and have been writing and getting pregnant ever since. Oh, and I married the boyfriend.