Patricia Gaffney
Patricia Gaffney was born in Tampa, Florida, and grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy from Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, and also studied literature at Royal Holloway College of the University of London, at George Washington University, and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
After college, Gaffney taught 12th grade English for a year before becoming a freelance court reporter, a job she pursued in North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., for the next fifteen years.
Her first book, a historical romance, was published by Dorchester in 1989. Between then and 1997, she wrote 11 more romance novels (Dorchester; Penguin USA), for which she was nominated for or won many awards. Many of these previously out of print classics are available again today as digitally reissued classics, including the author's most recently re-released and much beloved novels in The Wyckerley Trilogy.
In 1999, she went in a new direction with her hardcover fiction debut, The Saving Graces (HarperCollins). A contemporary story about four women friends, the novel explored issues of love, friendship, trust, and commitment among women. The Saving Graces enjoyed bestseller status on the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and other lists.
Circle of Three (2000), Flight Lessons (2002), and The Goodbye Summer (2004) followed, all national bestsellers. Gaffney’s most recent novel was Mad Dash (2007), a humorous but insightful look at a 20-year marriage, told from the viewpoints of both longsuffering spouses.
More recently, Pat's been indulging her purely creative side in a brand new format for her -- novellas. With friends including J. D. Robb, she has contributed stories to three anthologies, all New York Times bestsellers. In "The Dog Days of Laurie Summer" (The Lost, 2009), a woman in a troubled marriage "dies" and comes back as the family dog. "The Dancing Ghost" (The Other Side, 2010) brings together a pretty spinster and a shady ghost buster in 1895 New England. And in "Dear One" (The Unquiet, 2011), a fake phone psychic (or IS she?) meets her match in a stuffy Capitol Hill lobbyist -- who couldn't possibly be that sexy-voiced cowboy from Medicine Bend who keeps calling the psychic line.
Patricia Gaffney lives in southern Pennsylvania with her husband.
“Isabel never despaired, even though I think she knew everything that was going to happen, right from the beginning. There was a Walt Whitman poem she liked, especially the part that went - 'All goes onward and outward,/Nothing collapses/And to die is different from/What anyone supposes/And Luckier.' She tried to believe that, and it gave her some comfort, I know. She was very brave. Always. She hid her anguish and sadness, although I know she felt them. Because she wasn't losing only one person she loved - as we have. She was losing all of them.”
“You were the best thing in my life … I did love you. I do. As much as I’ve ever loved anyone, as much as I can. It feels like a lot – it takes up my whole heart.”
“I just tried to put myself in her place and figure out what would be the scariest thing. If I thought I might be dying. And it was being alone' ... 'To me,' she said, 'the scariest thing is oblivion. Being, and then not being.”
“I love the slow, warming sensation of my body going numb when I drink.”
“I hate jealousy. At least it's its own punishment; it makes me feel like hell.”
“I was thinking in a Scottish brogue, because I'd just heard this guy interviewed on NPR, Lonnie McSomething.”
“Imagine me maintaining anybody's equilibrium.”
“I was small enough to mind that Rudy had a good friend other than me.”
“laughter is cathartic and cleansing, that it's good for the body and the soul, and when it's real it's better than sex.”
“What the hell is this stuff?" he muttered, frowning at the oily spot on the linen cloth. "Pearlman slathered it on me this morning.""It's macassar oil. Gentlemen use it to keep their hair neat. Nicholas used it," she added pointedly."Well, tomorrow he's giving it up. I smell like a rotten apple.""You do not. And I think it looks rather nice."He sent her an incredulous look. "I look like an otter. And everything I put my head against gets greasy.""That's why someone invented the antimacassar," she told him, almost smiling."The-aha!" He laughed as he made the connection. "Of course. First they invent something stupid, then something ugly to make up for it. We live in a wondrous age, Annie.”
“Little things. The thought of losing them makes them unbearably dear ... I only think of the sweetness. Simple things. The quarter moon, the taste of an orange. The smell of the pages of a new book.”