News from Nancy

As we head into the holiday season, I think that some of the more. . .mature. . . of my […]

Autumn is a calm season on the island. The light slants differently on the houses and the harbor. Now we

             While writing this blog, I’ve discovered I’m obsessed with houses. Island Girls is about three sisters who will inherit

Multi-talented Sara Prentice Manela made this wonderful map for me years ago, to show where special places in my book

I wonder how many public high schools have the skeleton of a whale hanging in the main hallway. Nantucket High

It’s true, what Mitchell’s window says. Life is a wonderful fairy tale. Not all the time, maybe, but sometimes, and

The Island House is about two young women with secrets that will change their lives during one summer on Nantucket.

What inspires my writing? Sometimes, my memory–and my diary, which I kept from the time I was 17. I dated

I had a really good idea for a novel. What if a lovely divorced woman with a little girl marries

  In Between Husbands and Friends, I explored the secrets we tell our husbands, our friends, and ourselves. Nantucket summers,

I think it takes a while for anyone who moves to a strange new town to feel as if they

“Could she just accept her child? Or should she, must she, remain on guard, forever nudging and nagging her daughter

           Everlasting flowers are those that keep their color and shape for, well, a very long time, if properly dried.

(The ereader cover)            In this novel,  Daphne Miller is trying to rebuild her life after she was divorced from

  A writer, Fanny Anderson, says those words on page 252 of my novel Morning. At the beginning of the

Sometimes the separation between fiction and autobiography is as thin as gossamer. In 1983, after I met Charley Walters, I

In 1978, Tillie Olsen published a non-fiction book called Silences, where she shares a survey proving that then—in 1978—one of

I’ve always said that I wanted to write books about real women’s lives. I’ve wanted to include the dirty dishes

By the time my first novel, Stepping, was published, I had already written most of my second novel. As I

It was a glorious occasion when my first novel, Stepping, was published by Doubleday in January, 1980!  If you want

YOUR LIFE IS NOT A NOVEL OR MAYBE IT IS! I’ve always wanted to write about the lives of “ordinary”

When I looked at the photo of our library–republished here because I accidentally deleted it–I saw 2 books by and

SEASONS GREETINGS!             This how my daughter posed me for a picture: me on top of a pile of books,

WHAT INSPIRES MY BOOKS? A Nantucket Christmas was inspired by dogs. Here’s Kiska, with her personal shopper and fashion designer

AN ISLAND CHRISTMAS I hope you all had a delicious Thanksgiving!  I did, but I’m happy to be back at

A NANTUCKET CHRISTMAS Where do my ideas come from? Christmas and dogs are two of my favorite things, so when

This is the ereader cover of Spirit Lost, my favorite of all this book’s covers. The artist got that the

When our 1840’s house lost power the exact moment I typed that the house in my novel lost power, I