Mary Kay Andrews

I wanted a garret hideaway to write in like Jo March in 'Little Women.'

The best way to heal a broken heart, it turns out, is to find a way to move past the hurt.

I want characters I can live for in a setting that makes me feel like I'm there.

Although I married a sports-loving jock, I myself am not only not athletic, I am acutely, completely uncoordinated.

On my first trip to New York in the 1980s, the first place I wanted to visit was the Plaza Hotel, home to Kay Thompson's Eloise.

My protagonists have problems that a new pair of shoes won't solve. Retail therapy is not a bad thing, but it's not going to fix their lives.

Modern love - in the movies and music - especially country music - is full of tales of women exacting sweet revenge on the men who done them wrong.

Between planning family vacations and running away for novel-writing retreats, I've spent much of my adult life questing for the perfect beach escape, renting cottages all along the Florida Gulf and up and down the Atlantic Coast - as far north as Nags Head, as far south as Key West.

My perfect beach town isn't a fancy resort or glitzy planned community. It's a place with a hometown grocery that has decent meat, seafood, and a deli; a couple of ice cream shops; and a handful of good restaurants - where the island-wide dress code is 'no shoes, no shirt, no problem.'

Critics will tell you the 'meet cute' is a tired old writing cliche, but the thing is, cliche's work - because they ring true with the reader.

I wasn't always overweight. I was a skinny little punk of a kid with severe asthma. When I got married at the age of 22, I wore a cut-down size eight wedding gown.

Some of my most enjoyable moments as a writer have come while conjuring a meet cute.