Fun Facts About ALL OF ME

1.   After I had written the character of Mutt—who let’s face it, is not an attractive puppy—I was driving over to my in-law’s house to take my mother-in-law to the doctor and found a dog digging in their trash can. It was Mutt. Exactly as I’d envisioned him.

2.   Salvation is an amalgamation of two mountain towns in Colorado—Estes Park and Vallecito. They’re at opposite ends of the state, but I couldn’t decide which one I liked best, (they’re both so beautiful) so I moved Vallecito to Estes Park and called it Salvation. It’s fun being a writer. You get to defy geography.

3.   While in Estes Park doing research for All of Me, my husband and I stayed at the Stanley Hotel where Stephen King wrote The Shining. In the middle of the night we had to evacuate because a forest fire came within half a mile of the hotel.

4.   The character of Jillian is loosely based on a friend of mine and she had a wicked stepmother just like Jillian’s. My editor actually asked me to tone down the stepmother, thinking no one could be that mean to a kid, but she was.

5.   Characters truly can take over. When Tuck did to Jillian what he does in the middle of the night, I wanted to slug him. I tried to make him not do it, but he insisted and I let him be true to his character.