RHRC: Complicated relationships between mothers and daughters have come up in a few of your novels. What interests you about the dynamics between the generations?

LS: That's a great question because I was about to say that I don't write about complicated mother-daughter relationships and then I realized that, yeah, I do. Talk about not recognizing a piece of yourself in what you write. I just think mothers and daughters are so important to each other: Your mom is your role model as well as your parent. You learn how to be a person from both of your parents but you learn how to be a woman from your mother. For so many of us, the dreams and the hopes came from our mothers—the ones she told us about, and the ones we inherited from her without her knowing she was passing them down. In my case, that setup was heightened by the fact that my father died when I was young so my mother was an even stronger influence on me. And I'm fascinated by the question of how much of what we are is in our genes. I guess I find it very romantic to believe that certain traits are handed down in families. It sort of puts us and all our attempts to control things in perspective. And I like that.

RHRC: Do you plan out your story lines before you sit down and write them, or do you see what happens as you go along?

LS: I plan, to an extent. I need to know before I start writing how it's all going to end. And I need to know what I hope the reader will get from the book—beyond a good read. That's a sneaky little trick of mine; I always have a message I want to get across—but since I don't believe it's my job to preach, I try to slip in my opinions in a way that you can ignore if you want. And I usually have a plot twist in the middle that everything hinges on and I need to know what that's going to be and how it's going to work. But I don't always know how I'm going to connect all the dots and get from point A to point B. And I will never write it all down because if I did that, then I'd feel locked in. And I want to pretend that I'm this free spirit. Although actually I'm probably pretty well structured when I work.

RHRC: Which authors have influenced your work, and who are your favorites?