More from Liza Palmer's interview

Liza is the author of "Seeing Me Naked" and "Conversations with the Fat Girl". I talked with her last night on Realgoodwords - check out the archive to hear it yourself.

There are so many books that are labeled "chick lit" - stories that concern younger women. Often times books like "Sex and the City" are confused with being the norm; centering on fashion and boyfriends. But there is a whole world beyond "Sex in the City" that is thoughtful, fun and mostly about relationships, like Liza Palmer's writing.

I talked with her about her main character, Elizabeth:

"Elizabeth is just your run-of-the-mill 30 year old - always trying to figure out where she fits into life - she's a perfectionist who doesn't quite know what decisions she needs to make - the big decisions of career...family...love. She's doing okay, but I think she's kind of waiting for her life to kick in - and it's not clicking in at the moment."

And Liza continued, about that in-between time in life, like her character Elisabeth experiences as she starts making pastries that are more comfort foods....

"I think we start moving in a certain way - in our career or our taste - the books we read or movies we watch - before we get that we're moving that way personally. It's like the outside of our our life starts changing before we even realize it. I really identified with that."

and Liza's thoughts on her writing process...

"My first drafts are very quick because I hate the blank page. So I vomit out very quickly the worst first draft ever. I don't really know any of the characters at that point - so then I will go back and edit and edit and edit. "Seeing Me Naked" was edited like 10 times or something like that - It is almost like the first time you write a draft its like you and the main character are at a Starbucks together - like maybe you are in line and chat a little bit and the next time you edit is like you are at a bar and maybe you've got a beer in her and she opens up a little more - then the 3rd edit maybe you are driving up the coast to go to San Fransisco so you've got her for 8 hours and she opens up more. So every single edit I get to know her AND you also get to know the main characters by our secondary characters getting fleshed out. Every single edit you get the idea of your main character's world."