I was a child in the shadows of Mount Olympus (the Utah one) and became an adult on the shores of the Great Lakes (the Minnesota one). I now find myself in a land so hyperbolic it’s named for a mythical sixteenth century island: California. The west coast move with my husband and three daughters brought many delightful and unexpected lifestyle changes: building a chicken run, boogie boarding, harvesting citrus, hiking to redwoods and driving 20 minutes each way to everything. One of the biggest surprises, however, was the inspiration and drive to write, first in a blog that is still live, but poorly edited and not named here, and next in a novel that had just the barest hint of a plot and exists now only in the recesses of my Google drive. The next book is much better.