Little Pink Houses follows a forty-seven-year-old former corporate executive who flees Los Angeles for Ambergris Caye, Belize, hoping to reinvent herself, write a novel, and finally live outside the gravitational pull of family damage. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

Little pink houses! The abandoned resort in the book is real place on Ambergris Caye, and it’s every bit as fantastical as portrayed in the story. So I knew I wanted to use that as a setting. I kept imagining this little boy there, and because stories rely on tension, I needed the protagonist to be someone with completely different life circumstances, hence a wealthy woman who is childless by choice.

As for the plot itself, I jumped off the true history of the resort, though I did embellish quite a bit. For one, the information available online is sketchy. But the Y2K stuff? It’s a rumor, but as soon as I read it, I knew I could use that to add the humor and quirkiness I wanted to infuse into the novel.

Cole goes to Belize seeking reinvention, but the novel resists that fantasy. What drew you to the idea that starting over is never clean?

To use a cliché, wherever you go, there you are, right? Like Cole, I’m at an age in life where many people start looking back and saying, What if? But we can’t go backward or erase old mistakes. Things in our pasts may fade, but they never go away. All we can do is find peace around them and keep on moving forward.

The island feels humid, alive, and slightly uncanny. What role did Belize play in shaping the emotional tone of the novel?

Belize—Ambergris Caye in particular—completely shaped the novel. It embodies the isolation Cole feels and serves as a juxtaposition of the Hollywood materialism Cole is running away from. Because I wanted to capture the magic of Belize, I leaned into Mayan spirituality which is still very present in the lives of native Belizeans. It’s very tied to the natural world, but because it is so sacred, there’s a lot of mystery surrounding it. So while I used it to add a playful element to the book, I took great pains to be respectful of the culture and its traditions.

The book blends humor, grief, romance, and introspection. What do you hope readers take with them after finishing this novel, and what has stayed with you after writing it?

I like to weave multiple themes into my fiction. This book touches on forgiveness, the damaging power of assumptions, and the subjectivity of memory, to name just a few. The plotline veers into addiction, ecological issues, and cultural dilemmas. Because reading is a very personal journey, I hope readers will find something they need—something healing—whatever that might be.

For me, the biggest lesson is the one Cole learns. That fear can be used as a tool to move forward, rather than stopping you. It takes a lot of courage to put your words out in the world, and very proud of how the novel turned out.

But ultimately, I hope that when people get to the last page, they’ve had so much fun reading that they’re sad to say goodbye.

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