People have been asking me, how long did it take you to write your novel? The answer is around five years. And over those five years it changed and changed, trying to figure out what it wanted to be. I started out with the idea that I wanted to write about a psychotherapist, Mark—about his family, his loves, and his work. I started falling in love with my characters and then added new characters, ones that were harder to love. I added therapy sessions, because I wanted to know how Mark's ideas about love and loss were informed by his clients. My writing group encouraged me to keep writing, that what I was writing was interesting. After writing scores of episodes, I felt like it was something, but I wasn't sure how all these lives and stories fit together. My husband encouraged me when I told him that I needed some uninterrupted time to piece it all together. I went away and spent 10-hour days putting the pieces together and shaping a coherent narrative. My writing group and my writer-daughter read my draft and made suggestions. I needed some additions. The sons' voices were missing. Six months later, I needed another retreat to re-view the full story and did another revision integrating new perspectives. It landed. I refined and copy-edited with my husband's help. And it became Fault Lines: The Geography of Love.