Mary Kay Andrews

Southern women, especially upper-middle-class women, care deeply about appearances and what other people think.

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.

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

As soon as I started reading, I found myself drawn to fictional character's homes as much as I was to the characters themselves.

I'm house obsessed, a house voyeur. Always have been.

For a writer, capturing that elusive Christmas morning magic can be deeply problematic.

For years, I swore I couldn't work out because my own sweat gave me a rash.

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

Slipcovers are great because they can be laundered after those all-too-frequent sippy cup and red wine incidents.

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 ideal beach house has bookshelves full of paperbacks that can tolerate a little sand, a DVD library that includes some Disney classics for the little ones, board games, and jigsaw puzzles. At least one big flatscreen television is a must.

My characters are turned upside down and trying to reinvent themselves but don't need a white knight. They can save themselves in a crisis.

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

I guess because I'm a washed-up journalist, I always do a lot of research.

I had never thought about writing a novel. But I had two young kids, and I realized that if I could write a novel, I could work at home.

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.

I always wanted to use my newspaper background in a novel.

We are writing fiction, but we are trying to create a world that's believable.

I want my fiction to seem real.

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

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.

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

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.

The story of my holiday decorating is if Ralph Lauren was trapped in a 1950s Woolworth, this is what it would look like.

I was supposed to be working on 'The Weekenders,' but I was blocked. I got this crazy idea that I would make Christmas stockings out of blankets.