Tucson Festival of Books: Julia Glass

So, I'm pushing forty and this is the first time I've gotten someone's autograph. Julia Glass is in my top five all-time favorite authors. I've read all her books once, The Whole World Over three times.

In each of my own novels, I make reference to one of the writers I most admire. In Finding Charlie, it's this scene of Olivia reading in her back yard:

"I was reading the latest novel by Julia Glass. She was delving deeper into the lives of characters who had been on the edges of her earlier work. I liked this idea: we are all peripheral characters in someone else’s story and every peripheral character is the lead in their own."

This is the way I write too - standalone stories with overlapping characters. No one does it better than Julia Glass, who was one of several inspiring authors at this year's Festival of Books. (But again, the only one whose autograph I just had to have!)