In today's episode, we chat with Christine Gunderson about her ten year journey to a traditional publishing deal, tenacity, and how to deal with rejection. She wrote her debut novel, Friends with Secrets, in her mini van in the school pick up line, at piano lessons, during drama rehearsals, at swim team practice, basketball practice, crew practice, and in lots of other unglamourous and uncomfortable places where only a mother who writes would write. Like most writers, Christine started life as a reader. Born and raised on a fourth-generation family farm in rural North Dakota, she devoured Laura Ingalls Wilder books in her very own little house on the prairie. She also burned holes in her chenille bedspread while attempting to read Trixie Belden books under the covers when she was supposed to be asleep. During these formative years growing up on the farm, Christine learned to haul grain, drive a combine, and pick rocks, skills that have yet to be useful later in life. Growing up on the prairie fifty miles from the nearest McDonalds also gave Christine a lifelong aversion to trees, and a craving for wide open spaces. She eventually left the farm, attended college, then headed into the wide world to seek her fortune. She pursued the kind of jobs where you get paid to talk and write and no one cares that you almost failed algebra. She worked as television anchor and reporter and a Capitol Hill press secretary, then left it all behind to stay home with her children, where algebra still continues to baffle her all these years later. Christine currently live in the Washington D.C. suburbs with her three children, Star the Wonder Dog, and a very patient husband. When not writing, she's sailing the Chesapeake Bay with her family, playing Star Wars monopoly, re-reading Jane Austen novels or unloading the dishwasher. After years of rejection and heartache on the road to publication, the fact that someone is actually reading a book she's written continues to astonish her, and she absolutely loves to hear thoughts and ideas from readers. You can contact her at www.christinegunderson.com and sign up for her newsletter, Notes on Love and Laundry. Support your local bookstore & this podcast by getting your copy of the #1 Best Seller Friends with Secrets at Bookshop.org https://bookshop.org/a/90599/9781662522710 or support this podcast by getting your copy of Friends with Secrets through our Amazon Affiliate link - https://amzn.to/3WRCt8c Be sure to follow or subscribe to Author Express wherever you listen to podcasts and to follow us on Instagram @AuthorExpressPodcast Learn more about our hosts, the guests we've had, and their books - https://linktr.ee/AuthorExpressPodcast