In 2016, I started getting calls from my mom in Pennsylvania about the election. She loathed the man running, supported the woman, and, like most of us, was one hundred percent sure the right person would win. Then, election day happened.  

My 70-year-old mother was out of her mind, “How could this happen?” Why did this happen? How come no one is doing anything?”

She was waiting for someone to step up and fix the thing that was wrong. Spoiler alert, no one did.

But it wasn’t just my mother; a lot of people were saying the same thing:  Where was our Superman?

It started me thinking. I wanted to write something about that feeling of needing a hero. I wanted to create a cathartic fantasy. A “What if?” I tried to imagine a realistic way a person could have stopped the giant meteorite from smashing into Earth. I thought of stories I liked about righteous lawyers, like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or heroic space miners, a la Armageddon, but eventually I turned back to my mother. I started to imagine a scenario where she was the hero. Where she was the one who saved the world.

I thought a lot about what could motivate someone like her to take a stand, and then I rewatched Inglourious Basterds. Sure, he was Hitler and, you don’t really, you know, need to come up with a reason to want to kill him. But I loved that movie so much because for Shosanna it was personal. She wants to kill Nazi’s to avenge her family. That personal motivation made that cartoonish, violent ending so joyful. I remember seeing it in a theatre and laughing in a way I don’t ever remember laughing before or since. Full-on belly laugh. I wanted my story to be like that.

Also, since my protagonist was older, I was thinking a lot about one of my favorite books, The Bridges of Madison County. Specifically, the idea of finding love when you have more or less given up on ever feeling that feeling again for people of a certain age hit me hard. I was in my 20s when I read that and still that story broke through my missanthropic, acerbic protective shell.

And so I set out to try to write that story. At first, I wrote a screenplay, and then it became a novel. The story of a 70-year-old grandmother who has never committed a crime in her life, but is actively planning the murder of a man who just won an election. Let me say here, this is fiction, as in not real. I in no means encourage or support violence for any reason. Full Stop.

I do, however, enjoy it as a fun fantasy, and even find it cathartic. And as I have already mentioned, I also have a sentimental side, and I love books with real romance in them. I love Pip and Theo in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Walter and Patty in Franzen’s Freedom. And so, I set out to write this fictitious story. I wanted to write a version of The Bridges of Madison County—older people finding love—as if Quentin Tarantino—fun revenge fantasy—wrote it. And I did it, and it will be available very soon!

Please sign up for the mailing list so I can let you know when, and where, to buy the book!