Until We Meet takes place on the other side of the country: Brooklyn, New York. It is two years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the United States is in the middle of the war. Three women work at the Brooklyn Navy Yard building that very same Missouri that I stood on. Not knowing the significance that ship would bear just two years later. Margaret, Dottie, and Gladys are just like you and me. They have hopes and dreams, they want love and employment and happiness. They do charitable things while laughing together. They worry about their families.

Though romance is a thread throughout my books, it was the friendship of women that intrigued me most as this story developed.

Of the three, I think I am most like Margaret. Drawn equally to tradition and progress. Content and yet the carrier of dreams. However, I had great fun writing Gladys—all sass and fire, two words that do not describe me. Or at least the me that most often comes out—perhaps writing her revealed my inner rebel more than I realized.

Similar to inhabiting the life of a character in one of the many high school musicals I once performed in, writing gives me the chance to step into another’s shoes and play.

I was also excited to incorporate letter writing into the story as that medium has had a profound impact on my life. At one time as a teenager, I had twenty-two pen pals worldwide. This was long before the internet or E-anything were a part of our vernacular. Long before words on a screen became poor substitutes for those in ink. It was through those letters that I discovered places beyond my own borders and made friendships that helped me through those rough young years.

Though none of them were of a romantic nature, I do believe that true and deep friendships can develop through such a format. And I believe love, too, can emerge.

Pen and paper provide an anonymity that, ironically, best allow us to reveal our truest selves.

Even now, I write close to fifty letters a year.

As much as I enjoyed writing about the characters, one of the most fascinating things to me about writing historical fiction is learning something about which I know little and correcting assumptions I’d previously made.

For example, I was excited to learn that the commissioning of the USS Missouri took place in June 1944, which fit very well with the storyline. Then—the horror!—I realized through research that a launch (which comes with a lot of pomp and circumstance) and a commissioning are two separate events, often months apart.