I’ve believed those words since I was old enough to get a thrill from reading Sweet Valley High.

You should see what that kind of personal mantra will do for youthful poetry and diary keeping. Then again, maybe not…

What does my love story look like today? A house in a suburb, shared with my husband, our second-grader, and a pug named Maurice who barks at the scrolling headlines on the nightly news. It looks like working through dialogue while folding laundry and trying not to plot novels at the office, weekly trips to the market and writing in my Moleskine during swimming lessons.

My earliest stories were very glamorous — Sweet Valley meets Pine Valley (oh, yes, I just went straight to All My Children). Fabulous success, splashy materialism, exotic locales: your basic teenage nightmare. These days, I find the beauty in small town love stories.

This fall I’m launching Sweet Pease, the much-anticipated sequel Damselfly Inn, and second full-length novel in the Thornton Vermont series. Check out the Thornton Vermont tab for behind the scenes info about the fictional town of Thornton, its real-life inspiration and my process, and the characters who call it home.

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