Back in 2010, a few months after my mother had died, I quit my job of nearly 25 years at the Philadelphia Inquirer, where I was a features staff writer.

The essay I wrote about that time, that sudden change of how I identified, caught the attention of a writing group, the PlayPen Writers Group. Without a newsroom, the monthly gathering of women who wrote essays, fiction and more served as a welcome forum to exchange ideas. It was there that I first learned about NaNoWriMo – the National Novel Writing Month. (This was well before the recent controversies that have tainted and shuttered NaNoWriMo.) The goal was to spend a month writing a first draft of an entire novel. For some reason, the month was November, already busy with Thanksgiving.

Still, I like a challenge. It was a stretch where much of my time was being spent on cleaning out the condo of my pack-rat parents. Seemingly trivial items—a mortar and pestle, a fancy dress, a set of Nancy Drews – evoked vivid memories. I was struck by what I remembered. Was it accurate? Or was it lacquered in nostalgia?

It served as a seed for an idea—for a novel. I wrote 25,000 words that November. I wanted to explore how those remembered memories serve as a connection to the past, a way to make amends perhaps for fraught relationships or at least understand that relationship better.

I worked on my novel off and on for the next seven (!) years, often at a coffee shop with a fellow writer working on her own novel. Then I spent another five or so years looking for an agent or publisher. Lucky for me, I met Tara Tomczyk, publisher and editor at Blydyn Square Books, at Rosemont College, which was hosting on its campus the wonderful “Push to Publish” that Philadelphia Stories runs.

Blydyn signed me Aug. 17, 2021. The next three years were spent revising. Early this year, my manuscript was finally green lighted. Then it was a frantic rush to copy edit, come up with the back of book copy, and review the cover design—all with the goal of a Spring 2026 launch.

As 2025 comes to an end, I’m waiting for the final cover and pinching myself that I’ll actually be a published author after all these years. Spring can’t com