I felt very much the latter during our trip East during the last couple of weeks. It was a whirlwind mixture of family time and business, the latter unusually rewarding (and the former pretty great, too.) For starters, after nearly six years of representation, I finally got to meet my agent, Barbara Braun, and her husband and associate, John Baker, in person. We met in a diner off Union Square in Manhattan and, despite my ability to get lost in my own backyard, I managed to get there just fine on the subway in time to enjoy a long conversation about writing and publishing.
Then we headed to Philadelphia, where for years I was lucky enough to be an on-and-off member of the legendary Rittenhouse Writers’ Group headed by James Rahn, author of Bloodnight. RWG graciously hosted a Montana reading and book signing at Michael Lieberman’s Hooloon Art gallery. During the Q-and-A afterward, a childhood neighbor from Delaware brought out the fact that Montana protagonist Lola Wicks takes her last name from the owners of a potato farm near our respective homes, and I also outed another friend of mine as the person upon whom the character of Lola’s feisty, funny best friend, Mary Alice, is based. (Sorry about killing her off, Joanne!)
I really envy people who say they don’t care about reviews; don’t even read them, in fact. I can’t even fake being one of those people. Whenever a good review for Montana came in, I danced around the room. The bad ones sent me into a fetal position. Luckily, there were more – lots more – of the former than the latter. Which created a whole new level of paranoia. What if people hated the sequel, Dakota? Well, the first review is in, and I did the happy dance. 
This coming week, Lola heads even farther east, to Philadelphia, my old stomping grounds. I’ll be doing a reading there on Wednesday night, sponsored by the 
This year, I had the particular joy of signing several copies of my novel, 
My parents have been doing quite the tap dance these last few weeks, what with both their daughters publishing first novels. My sister Kathleen, who writes as D.C. McLaughlin, recently came out with her vampire novel, 
In a way, Kathleen and I didn’t have much choice about becoming writers. We grew up surrounded by books and writers. My dad, Tony Florio, wrote and illustrated 
So I dropped the work on Dakota and spent two full days poring over Montana, finding 19 mistakes in the process. That sort of things gives you – at least it gives me – nightmares. Because what if I missed something? That’s the equivalent of getting run over by the locomotive. 
I’m excited about it for so many reasons. I’ll get to meet 
Anyone who’s ever seen my desk (at right, on a relatively clean day) knows I never throw anything out.
It just so happens that many years ago I wrote a perfectly dreadful novel set in Wyoming. It didn’t go anywhere, and thank God for that. But I liked parts of it, and now am happily going all Hannibal Lecter on those parts for this new novel. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is proof positive of the wisdom of never throwing anything away.