Is there one subject you’d never write about as an author?

There’s no subject that I’d never write about. I wouldn’t write anything that I wouldn’t want to read but I don’t consider any subject taboo. However, there is one subject difficult for me to write about: medicine. As a practicing physician, I struggle to detach myself from what I do enough to write about it without going on a rant. I’ve become less emotional about medicine now that I’ve given up the clinical world for the administrative, so maybe it’s time to try again.

What do you want your tombstone to say?

Either “Hey, hey, hey, goodbye” or “Consider me gone.” Or one of those flowery eighteenth/nineteenth century epitaphs that seem to go on for a page-and-a-half and tell your entire life story.

Is there any persons you credit for being your inspiration for reading and/or writing?

My parents. Some of my earliest memories are of Mom reading in the car on the way home after picking me up from daycare (Dad drove. He did not read while he drove.), of the stacks of library books she brought home on a regular basis, and of her sitting with a cup of tea and a book while Sunday dinner roasted in the oven. She reads all the time. Dad would schlep me to whatever obscure writer’s conference or seminar I signed up for, even after I got my driver’s license. (I hated driving into DC; Dad chauffeured me without complaint.) My parents let me have a library card as soon as I reached the library’s minimum age, they gave me books as gifts, and their bookshelves are crammed fuller than mine.

The late Nancy Willard, award-winning children’s book writer. I had the privilege of taking her writing classes when I was a Vassar undergrad. She was one of the first people not related to me to take my writing seriously and make me think I could do this “for real.”

Where is one place you want to visit that you haven’t been before?

There are about a gazillion places I want to visit. One is Portugal. It seems romantic and mysterious.

What book do you wish you could have written?

Crime and Punishment. People treat it as this iconic work of literary fiction but it’s actually a pretty good crime novel. I want to write a literary crime novel.

What do you like to read in your free time?

Mysteries, of course. Also science fiction and creative nonfiction about science and disasters.

Do you have mantra for writing and/or life?

Writing: Stop making excuses and do it.

Life: Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. (Yeah, I’m a bit of a cynic.)