I'm a novelist, and I'm a woman, and I'm considered to be a serious author whether I like it or not.

I'm a novelist - not an expert on coal mining. I'm not a politician with an agenda to push. I'm not a reporter presenting facts, and I'm not a sociologist documenting the last struggling remnants of blue-collar America. I'm simply an author who sets her books in coal country because it's where I come from, and it's what I know.

I saw myself as a writer, a novelist, even though I was living the life of a mother and housewife. Writing was - and is - what I do.

I've discovered as an author that the process of writing a novel becomes harder over time, not easier. I used to think the reverse must be true, that it would be like any task, and the more I practiced, the more adept I'd become.

I should have been deliriously happy. I had my dream come true. I'm a best-selling author. So why is everything in my life, including my writing, going bad?

My experience growing up in a rough and tumble town in the blue-collar world of Western Pennsylvania in the 1970s was that anything a man did was always more important than anything a woman did.