DO YOU WANT THE HOUSE TOUR?

Here's a look at my new-ish office and a few of my favorite things

It’s been a hot, busy, smoky summer here in Philadelphia!

My daughter graduated from high school. She’ll be off to college in September, and I am having a lot of big feelings about it.

My husband and I spent a lovely week in upstate New York. I was in conversation with authors including Brooke Averick, Jessica Knoll, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney and Jill Biden.

I’ve done a lot of reading and writing and biking and running, and even fit in a sprint triathlon (was I fast? I was not. Did I finish? Yes, I did).

Just once, I’d like a race picture where I look like I’m not about to die.

And I am so excited to start talking about my 2027 book, TRUE STORY. We’re putting the finishing touches on the cover and I can’t wait to tell you what the book is all about, what inspired it, and, maybe most of all, the spicy side quest it’s sent me on.

But meanwhile, I thought I would take you on a little tour of my writing space.

Our story begins with a closet.

Actually, our story begins with an enormous bedroom, which featured a wall of reach-in closets. After the house was purchased, we did some renovations – new floors, a few new walls, a new staircase to present the artistic-but-hazardous metal one that had previously connected the floors. I looked at the line of closets in the bedroom and said, “Maybe we could turn those into a walk-in closet.” Hashtag be careful what you wish for, because I basically got the most enormous walk-in closet ever, complete with light-up mirror and built-in vanity. It’s the size of my childhood bedroom. It’s the Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex and the City 2” closet. Which, alas, did not come with Carrie Bradshaw’s wardrobe.

The closet quickly became a repository for my clothing, and my daughter’s clothing (I’d store things from the older one to wait until the younger one got big enough to wear them), and books…because every room in my house is full of books.

For the first twelve years I lived in this house, I wrote in the closet. My joke was that my mom came out of the closet, and I went in. I’d sit at the vanity and do my typing.

Now: there is an actual office in the house, filled with copies of my books in many different languages. But that’s always been where my assistant works. I stayed in the closet.

I have never been fussy about where I work. Some of that is the result of being a newspaper reporter, writing on deadline with people talking and phones ringing and police scanners and television sets bolted to the walls all blaring the news. And some of it is the result of writing with kids, which meant years of stealing scraps of time whenever and wherever I could find them. I wrote in coffee shops and waiting rooms and even in the car. I wrote in the hours between naps and preschool pickup and drop-off, and, later, water polo matches and school plays. I can write anywhere: airports, hotel rooms, planes, trains and automobiles.

The closet gave me two sets of doors between me and the world. My daughters knew where to find me if they really needed me while I was writing, but they had to come through two sets of doors to do it. Boundaries!

I was also influenced by what Stephen King had to say in “On Writing,” about keeping writing proportionate, and the dangers of indulging in a giant office:

He tells the story in On Writing: how, in the flush of his early success, he bought an enormous desk, “the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room,” something he had always dreamed of. “No more child’s desk in a trailer laundry-closet no more cramped kneehole in a rented house.”

He bought his desk and placed it in the middle of his spacious, sky-lighted study. Then he spent six years writing “at that desk, either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship’s captain in charge of a voyage to nowhere.”

After he got sober, he got rid of the giant desk, replacing it with a smaller one, tucked under the eaves. “Put your desk in the corner,” King writes, “and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”

I was happy to work at my little vanity. I also appreciated the giant dresser running down the middle of the giant closet. When my back was grouchy, I could prop my laptop on a storage box and type standing. It all worked.

Then the pandemic happened. Everyone was home, all the time, and home became not just my residence and my office, but also a twenty-four hour diner, a laundromat, a school, a gym and a workplace for four people. I decided it was time I had the fabled Room of My Own. Nothing grand, just a cozy little nook where I could do my Zooms without being disruptive, or disrupted.

I asked my amazing decorator Mia if we could lop off a portion of the ginormous closet and turn it into an office.

She made it happen, and found the desk and the bookshelf and the beautiful wallpaper. I have been so happy writing there, especially because, when I look out the window, I can see the roof deck garden to my right, and, underneath me, our little brick outdoor space, with flowers, and a koi pond.

But I feel very lucky to have such a lovely little workspace, and to have so many of my treasures close at hand.

There are papiere-mache butterflies my older daughter made, and a sampler with a GOOD IN BED quote that my first agent gifted me.

There’s a vase my younger daughter made, and a Mothers’ Day card from my older one that says I am – and I quote – “loving, funny, and the best mom EVER.”

There’s a framed poster from the UK publicity campaign for GOOD IN BED. These guys were hung at Tube stations? I think?

There’s my favorite picture of me and my husband, at his parents’ place at the Jersey Shore, and a gorgeous John Derian paperweight, some oyster shells I decoupaged and a tiny felt sculpture of my beloved Moochie, who went over the rainbow bridge after eleven years of being devoted to me, tolerant of my husband and children, and hostile to everyone else.

There are gifts from my readers: a GOOD IN BED purse! A tiny painting of Wendell, Moochie’s predecessor, and a painting of the beach that a reader gave me at an event at Browseabout Books in Delaware.

And there are books – a big stack of newly-released and advanced copies of books coming soon for my reading pleasure (this is one of the very best parts of being an author – getting all the books).

Maybe someday I’ll get an actual standing desk, with a walking pad underneath it. But I don’t think I’ll ever upsize my little workspace, which has everything I need: a good desk and a good chair, my treasures, a door that closes, and a window that reminds me that the real world is never too far away.