My novel Lilah's List will be out in January. It's the story of a woman who finds a life list she made as a teenager two weeks before she turns thirty. She decides she's going to get as much of the list done as she can before her birthday.

Thanks to Lilah I started thinking of some of the things I wanted to get done. Although thirty left me six years ago, there are still so many places I've wanted to go. So, this spring I made my very first trip to Europe. I saw London, Scotland, Paris, Rome, Florence and Venice. It was more amazing than I could have imagined.

Now I have a list of all the places I'd like to travel to, and each year, I hope to knock some place off the list. I'm not as adventurous as Lilah, I don't want to get a tattoo or ride a motorcycle. But, in the near future, I hope to ride a mechanical bull, continue to work on my French and learn to knit.

Sometimes art can inspire life.