People, including me, can get so detached from everything, but when you can focus on a defined place, a home, it gets you back in touch.

I should have been deliriously happy. I had my dream come true. I'm a best-selling author. So why is everything in my life, including my writing, going bad?

When you live in a community where people know you, it makes you want to be good and decent. It's a strong influence.

I don't try to sugarcoat things, but I also think my books make positive statements about the people and values in small-town America.

I'm a novelist - not an expert on coal mining. I'm not a politician with an agenda to push. I'm not a reporter presenting facts, and I'm not a sociologist documenting the last struggling remnants of blue-collar America. I'm simply an author who sets her books in coal country because it's where I come from, and it's what I know.

Each time a new disaster puts miners in the news, the press tries to make them into heroes, but they don't quite fit the bill. They don't march off to war or rush into burning buildings or rid our streets of crime.