MS -Good question, I'm trying to think now. How did it end? No, no I don't think I knew excatly how it was going to end. There was one scene in the book that sort of launched the whole story and I have to say it was my publisher who basically said your family characters are great, you need to get them stuck somewhere, where they all have to interact and she said off handed why don't you take them on vacation or something like that, to an island somewhere where you are all stuck together. When she said that I had just gotten back from a trip from Jamaica and it was all fresh in my head and when she said that I thought OMG, that would be a FIASCO!

You know the whole family stuck on this island with, you know, this woman having to chase this person for her professional and then her personal goals. So it was really once my publisher  suggested that, I thought OMG!

It was really fresh in my head. It was really easy, then one of the scenes just popped in my head, I'll just say the "meatball scene" for anybody who has not read it. It just popped into my head and once i thought of that, it just went quick after that.

UV -Is it autobiographical in anyway?

MS - No, in fact nothing in this story, I wish I had come into money, not that I wish my grandmother's death but you know, nothing that happened in the story was real at all, except when I do little flashbacks, you know some of the kids flashbacks are perhaps I have to say are a little bit grounded in reality. The story itself was totally made up. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with certain actresses, and I did have you know a scrapbook before scrapbooking was cool. I do have certain obsessions with you know people you probably think very old right now Meryl Steep, Sally Field, Mary Tyler Moore you know just these old time actresses which at the time were not very old. Collecting pictures of them, so, you know, writing the part about the woman being a little bit on the verge or I should say alot on the verge of being obsessive, I had a little bit of that in me when I was a kid, and I would get fixated on certain actresses, and that's something, that people, some people do and I thought it might make the characters kinda funny and a little bit pathetic and fun to watch.

UV -  Yeah, the book is certainly funny.
MS -  Thank you

MS -  Actually I have the screen play too, written of the book and I've been trying to peddle that becasue I think visually it would be a real fun movie.

UV - Okay you must be reading my mind because I was about to ask you, who would have play the main characters if your book did become a movie?

MS - That's funny, you know what, in my head the characters were certain people obviously, you know Marie was me. I didn't even bother to change the name very much and the funny thing is my sister, um her name is Nisa, N-I-S-A, instead of Lisa and I kinda did that as a joke to her because she's got a great sense of humour and I wanted to tease her in the book. I thought it would be really funny and she is gay too and it would be real fun to have her as a character too and she is so much like the character in the book. So um, in my mind they were really my family with the exception of Lorn Elaine which is the actress in the book and so I kinda threw in some actress names that i used to (laughs) have huge crushes on and I thought that's who should play it you know so anyway in the book it was Kate Mulgrew, who is the captain on Voyager, she's awesome though, that was just in my head. Now, I would love Rene O'Connor, who plays Xena's sidekick. I would love for her to be "the" actress. But obviously the lead character has to be very Italian looking.

UV - How has your life changed since becoming a published author?

MS - Well, um, one cool thing is, it certainly has not changed with money, if you are writing for the money, don't. Don't do it! And to touch on that, lesbians especially and I kinda wrote this at the back of the book, with a note from the Author, we tend to want to share things with our friends, believe it or not, I get fan letters, that say I loved your book and I lent it to four friends and you just want to laugh and go that's kinda like counter musician. You copied their CD and sent it to your friends, they don't really realise that.

I think probably in the way my life has changed is people reach out to you, which is really fun like you did and talking to someone from South Africa was certainly not on my to do list for the month! But I'm very happy to be doing that and I do get sporadic fan letters from all over the country and actually letters from Australia and England and its just fun. Not a barrage of letters even though I did put my email address in my book, so that people would write to me. I get probably on average, one or two a week but in the beginning when it was first released  I got several, probably four or five a week and it was really fun. I would correspond with everybody, I have met a lot of fun people too. I travel alot for my day job so when I'm in New York I hook up with fans there and when I travel I try  to meet people who read the book and have an interest in grabbing a drink . That's what I do.

UV - If you ever come to South Africa we can definitely hook you up with a lot of fans.

MS - I was hoping for an invite, fabulous, it's not on my list of places I have to travel for work but you just never know. Thank you, Fabulous, Thank you. I don't eat much I usually drop most of my food, but again you have to read the book to get that!