I’m stoked to welcome Randy Susan Meyers to My Shelf Confessions! She’s the author of  The Comfort of Lies which releases February 12! I’m also reading The Comfort of Lies and will be posting my review later this month, so keep on the lookout for that. :]

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My husband and I moved into our present home in November 2009, coming from a smallish condo where we shared an office. Unhappily. He said I couldn’t share; I said he didn’t know that offices were actually not supposed to be synonymous with toxic-waste-dumps. At the time I had neither wireless nor a laptop—so I was effectively tethered to my desk, and thus to the following choices

1. Hang a curtain down the middle of the room.

2. Enter a fugue state while writing.

3. Never turn around (my desk faced the window) and back out from the room (with my eyes closed) when leaving the room.

There are three things I worship when I write: quiet (I am not a music with work person, nor a coffee-shop writer,) solitude, and a hygienic space. Clean comforts me. Tidy soothes me.

This is not the case for my husband.

In our new home, I had a beautiful office all to myself, it had windows, and lights, and a view of trees. Bookshelves. A lovely desk. A comfortable leather chair with a hassock. Everything I’d dreamed of. I keep it quiet. And neat. And there is practically a chain across the entrance, so I have solitude. And yet, gradually, with my now laptop, and yes, wireless router, I drifted to a corner in the family room. Here, there are no reminders of unpaid bills, no piles of correspondence, no distracting pile of books I want/need to read—none of the work to be done that clutters my office, no matter how neat I try to keep it.

So here is where I write my books, happy in my corner, in my cozy chair, my feet on a wide hassock, with nothing to distract me from living inside my imaginary worlds.

Oh, and that chair? Right next to the kitchen, handy for that third, fourth, or fifth cup of coffee.

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Five years ago, Tia fell into obsessive love with a man she could never have. Married, and the father of two boys, Nathan was unavailable in every way. When she became pregnant, he disappeared, and she gave up her baby for adoption.

Five years ago, Caroline, a dedicated pathologist, reluctantly adopted a baby to please her husband. She prayed her misgivings would disappear; instead, she’s questioning whether she’s cut out for the role of wife and mother.

Five years ago, Juliette considered her life ideal: she had a solid marriage, two beautiful young sons, and a thriving business. Then she discovered Nathan’s affair. He promised he’d never stray again, and she trusted him.

But when Juliette intercepts a letter to her husband from Tia that contains pictures of a child with a deep resemblance to her husband, her world crumbles once more. How could Nathan deny his daughter? And if he’s kept this a secret from her, what else is he hiding? Desperate for the truth, Juliette goes in search of the little girl. And before long, the three women and Nathan are on a collision course with consequences that none of them could have predicted.

Riveting and arresting, The Comfort of Lies explores the collateral damage of infidelity and the dark, private struggles many of us experience but rarely reveal.

The Comfort of Lies

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We here at My Shelf Confessions are stoked to have author Colleen McCullough here today for Where You Write taking us on a lovely tour of her writing space! I know I say this a lot – but but I really love this post! I am so envious of the dragonfly wallpaper, so awesome! And there’s a special giveaway surprise at the end!

After writing bestsellers, one can actually have the writing space one always dreamed of inhabiting; such has been my fate, for which I am profoundly thankful.

It isn’t enormous. If it were, one would rattle around in it like a pea in a gourd. For me, it is efficient first and foremost, and only after that, attractive. My work chair is a fully upholstered tub chair with additional cushions of foam on top of the arms because I’m old and my bones poke through uncomfortably. The desk was hand-made by a cabinet artist in a U that has my chair in its embrace and sufficient drawers for a writer’s needs from erasers to carbon ribbons to correspondence files. A bar and a sloping surface underneath the desk allow me to put my feet up a little as I work. There are shelves on two walls to take a tenth edition Britannica and the bound galleys of my own works, sometimes needed, as well as photographs of my husband, me, and loved ones. Ornaments–always things people have sent me as gifts–dot crevices and small shelves, none of them costly, but all treasured. Many of the donors are dead, which happens with the passing of the years.

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