I grew up on a dairy farm in Southern California, which sounds like a punchline considering there are more miles of freeways than cows in that part of the world. At fourteen, my family moved to a town of 800 people in Idaho, which turned out to be the kind of experience that either breaks you or gives you tremendous material. For me, it was mostly the latter.

Somehow I ended up in television journalism before I was old enough to rent a car, producing local news in my late teens and early twenties. At twenty-four I did what any reasonable person would do and moved to London, where I earned a master's degree in International Journalism and a PhD in Sociology — which is a very expensive way to confirm that people are complicated and stories matter.

I spent twelve years in academia teaching journalism, finishing as the director of Georgetown University's Master's program. Along the way I published features in the Washington Post, chapters in a variety of academic books and an award winning short documentary.

Speaking of my husband — I married him at thirty-eight and consider it the best and most overdue decision I've ever made. We run SeeBoundless together, a visual media studio that tells stories for nonprofits, foundations, and government agencies. The work takes us everywhere — small towns, big cities, places that don't show up on anyone's travel list — and I genuinely love every bit of it. Hearing how people see the world has never gotten old.

Five years ago my husband and I landed in Santa Barbara, which turned out to be the kind of place that makes it very hard to leave and very easy to write.

Marlowe Gets a Rewrite is my debut novel. Set between the marble corridors of Washington D.C. and the bougainvillea-draped streets of Montecito, it's the kind of story that could only be written by someone who has lived in enough places — and talked to enough people — to know that starting over isn't a defeat. Sometimes it's the whole point.

It took a dairy farm, an Idaho winter, two degrees, a PhD, twelve years in a classroom, and approximately one husband to get here. I think it was worth it.