A tour of the Mexico City of Diego Rivera and Frieda Kahlo led by Barbara Kingsolver would be nice. And I certainly wouldn't turn down a tour of Johannes Vermeer's Delft led by Tracey Chevalier.
Cathy Marie Buchanan
I really became convinced I wanted to tell the story of the real-life model for the Degas sculpture 'Little Dancer Aged 14,' which was unveiled in 1881, the Belle Epoque.
I don't wait for inspiration. I get up and write every day.
I'm very comfortable with tweeting, I have a very active author Facebook page, I Skype book clubs all over the world.
I feel that if you made your writing too contrived to meet the market, it wouldn't be any good.
Growing up in Niagara Falls, Ontario, I took classes as a young girl and became very serious about ballet, and also performed with a local company, although it wasn't a professional company.
I write to explore something that fascinates me, and I write the way I do because it is the only way I know how to write.
I keep writing because it is deeply pleasurable to me.
Edgar Degas's famous sculpture, 'Little Dancer Aged Fourteen,' served as my muse for 'The Painted Girls.' I came upon a television documentary on the work, and as someone who held the sculpture in high esteem and who largely considered ballet to be the high-minded pursuit of privileged young girls, I was struck by what I would learn.
It breaks my heart that we are always being nudged toward the most recently published books, when so many worthy books have gone unexplored.
