Maggie Smith’s debut novel, Truth and Other Lies was published on March 8 and concerns three women trying to find their way amid major life changes. They’re of different ages with different backgrounds and secrets that may hold them back. Their stories are artfully woven together and challenge the reader to decide what’s allowable when you want to have a career. The ethical questions fascinated me and will provide lots of discussion possibilities for book clubs, I’m sure. I asked Maggie where she writes. Read on to find out more.

This is the space where I wrote my novel Truth and Other Lies.  At its heart, it’s a story of three women: a world-famous journalist at the end of her career who’s at risk of losing everything because of an online tweet; a neophyte politician knee-deep in a run for Congress who longs to reconnect with her estranged daughter; and a young reporter, desperate to reboot her stalled career, who must choose between the two when she uncovers a decades-old lie.

My husband works from home as well, so we’ve carved out separate areas of the house for private space and mine’s a re-purposed bedroom upstairs. Nice and big because I like space and I have piles of stuff everywhere (I swear I know where everything is!) After breakfast, I scurry away with my second mug of coffee, followed by my loyal sheltie dog, and shut off the world. I have seven full-size bookshelves that surround me, a window facing a grove of pine trees, and a glass desk that reminds me of the command post of a spaceship.  Behind me mounted on the wall is a bulletin board with 3 x 5 cards outlining my work in progress because, yes, I am a dyed-in-the-wool plotter. You can see a microphone arm on the right in this shot which I pull into place for my weekly podcasts and the shelves in my line of vision house a host of women’s fiction and suspense novels and several wooden animals from my collection. I keep a space heater at my feet for those cold Wisconsin winter days, a scented candle labeled “kill your darlings” that I light every morning, and a mousepad reminding me to put “tension on every page.” I’m a big fan of Brain.FM for blocking out sound – it’s either that or silence for me when I’m writing.

The book is available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook from online retailers or through your local independent bookstore. And you can connect with Maggie on her website, where you can sign up for her newsletter, as well as on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads, Amazon, BookBub, and on her podcast, Hear Us Roar