About The Mart

The inspiration for The Mart started with people I knew when I worked at a job when I was 17 and 18 years old. All of the stories in Friends, Lovers, and Other Strangers are based loosely on the characters I worked with. Of course, I used a lot of my own creative license. The two people in the novel, A Madness Most Discreet, Bitsy and Lewis, are completely made up and characters I created when I saw a young man working at a Walmart and a young woman working at Ocean State Job Lots. I just brought them together and built the story around them. Inspiration for stories often come from people I meet in my life or someone I knew in my past. A story just starts forming. I call it my muse giving me directions.

The people in the stories are those who I knew would never write their own story but still they were stories that needed to be told. Coming from a less than privileged life, a life many people cannot relate to since they possibly never wanted for anything in life, these are people who simply through birth, were never given any advantages and had to work hard for what they had. They work, they fall in love, they have a family. Generation after generation just barely making ends meet. Often sad stories, but stories I believe needed to be told.