Hello from Cleveland, where the sun is flirting but showing no signs of commitment.

For years I've been engaging with readers on Twitter and Facebook, and through email, but I'm new to doing so on Goodreads. I plead for your patience with my early stumbles here.

My novel, "The Daughters of Erietown," comes out on June 9, and I'm eager to talk about that. But let's talk about writing, too, with all its complications and exhilarations. And our dreams; always, our dreams. I'm 62 and coming out with my first novel. I may have a thought or two about not letting a dream deferred become a dream denied.

In my book, Erietown is a fictional place on the shore of Lake Erie. In my mind, it is the story of my working-class roots and all the people in that small town who wanted to build better lives for the people they loved. Every person in Erietown is flawed, but they are more than their biggest mistakes. Isn’t that what each of us hopes is true of ourselves?

I so look forward to conversations with readers about “The Daughters of Erietown,” and in this countdown to the book's release I keep thinking of my mother’s wise words for her teenage daughters: “Don’t marry him until you see how he treats the waitress.” What she meant was how we treat the people we’re allowed to mistreat is the measure of who we are. I come from those people, and my memories of them and their collective spirit, sometimes weary but never vanquished, kept me going in the decade it took to write this book. I’m nervous but also so excited for you to meet Ellie and Brick McGinty and their family, and all the other people of Erietown.