My first novel The German Heiress debuted near the start of the pandemic in 2020 — what’s changed since then? About me as an author, about how I write? Do I still love this book that was my secret little baby for almost 8 years?

That’s all too much for one post. I’d have to first write about how devastating it was to be on the terrifying high of releasing my first novel into the world only to have the world shut down all around me. In the US, The German Heiress was stocked at airports while airports were closed. In the UK, where I was scheduled to do publicity events, all my publisher’s plans went up in smoke. I will never forget the phone call from my agent which I took pulled over on the side of the road as I was picking up my daughter from school – the first day of the first lockdown. Of course I cried. Everything was up in flames and my career was over before it started.

Except that a combination of luck and perseverence proved this wasn’t true. In the US and Canada, The German Heiress was stocked at big box grocery stores, the only place still open and selling books in the pandemic. It hit some bestseller lists, to my total surprise. Two years later, my second novel The Soviet Sisters was published. Great, right? Yes. . .and I had to cancel my US launch party because I came down with covid. And the Russian invastion of Ukraine led to cancellations of publicity and discussions about how to angle a book that starred Russians, even if it was highly critical of the Soviet (authoritarian) system. But then, a year later, my sparkling third novel was published, Sinners of Starlight City. My pandemic novel, the one I wrote during lockdowns, the one set in Chicago, my last home in the US, my fun escape.

Now we’re at five years after my debut, and I’m working on my fourth novel. I’m hoping it will have nothing to do with pandemics (fingers crossed). In five years, I’ve had some massive ups and downs and I’m still doing what I love to do – telling stories. I write what entertains and intrigues me, and I pretty much ignore the trends. Life is too short to run after everybody else. I’m proud of my novels, each one is the best book I’ve ever written.

But there’s a special place in my heart for my debut. The German Heiress took me the longest to write, years of research and revisions and then more revisions. It helped me discover what kind of writer I am, how I like to write stories, what my strengths are. I’ve come a long way since it was published, and I intend to keep going. My debut taught me persistence, probably the single most crucial skill for authors in traditional publishing, or any kind of publishing for that matter. So here I am five years later, working hard, having fun (most of the time), excited to see what comes next.