English

Janice Levy
with 'The Scorpion Wore Pink Shoes'
Long Island, NY, US
Broadcast 4 June 2008

Soledad works as a cleaner at the Harrington hotel in New Hampshire. In one of the rooms Soledad finds a discarded pair of shoes and she thinks of her life back in Costa Rica, of her estranged husband and especially of her daughter who is about to celebrate her quinceanera - her 15th birthday.

"The inner side of the shoes curved toward the middle like the waistline of a young girl. Little silver chains of pearls were strung around the heels, which were several inches high. Soledad cradled the shoes in her hands and noted the soles looked clean and a piece of the price tag had not been scraped off one of them."

"I never wanted to be a writer. My childhood dream was to play centerfield for the New York Yankees. I'm still waiting for the call, but in the meantime I've got something to keep me busy.

Being a writer is like filling balloons of paint and dropping them from tall buildings. Dribs and drabs, blotches and swatches. Connect the dots - or not. Anything can happen.

To me it's like doing the hokey-pokey: stuff goes in, stuff goes out, then I shake it all about. I toss in a few characters, plop in a problem, chop up some action, sprinkle with a kiss, a hiss; a hug, a bug, until hmm.... it tastes just right. It's as mysterious as cracking open a safe; I don't know what I'll find, but I'm going in. I roll up my sleeves and get to work. Then I never give up.

I am the author of 13 children's books. My adult fiction has won the Writer's Digest Competition for Best Literary Fiction three times, I have stories published in literary and commercial magazines and many anthologies. Details can be found on my website."