Lisa Verge Higgins

Watchung Booksellers in New Jersey listed THE PROPER CARE AND MAINTENANCE OF FRIENDSHIPS one of their top ten selling trade paperbacks!

Great news! THE PROPER CARE AND MAINTENANCE OF FRIENDSHIP won the 2011 Golden Leaf Award for Best Single Title!

Great news! I just got "the call:" The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship is a Finalist in the Single Title category of the New Jersey Romance Writer's Golden Leaf Award! Woo-hoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great news! The Proper Care and Maintenance of Friendship has just gone into a second printing! Woo-hoo!!!!!!!! Thanks so much for all your support!

November 1, 2010

Publisher's Weekly reviewed THE PROPER CARE AND MAINTENANCE OF FRIENDSHIP! They call it a "life-affirming novel," and added "[Lisa Verge Higgins] creates a happy reminder that life is all about taking risks." Despite having written a dozen books, this is my very first appearance in PW, and I'm over the moon! Check it out:

October 6, 2010

Yes, I have a secret double life. When I'm not writing novels, I write reviews for the New York Journal of Books. It's an opportunity to slake my lust for juicy historical novels. Come see my favorites at : http:/​/​www.nyjournalofbooks.com/​reviewer/​lisa-verge-higgins

September 10, 2010

I'm thrilled to announce that Luanne Rice, the New York Times bestselling author of The Geometry of Sisters (and about two dozen more books!) has graciously read PROPER CARE and loved it enough to give us a cover-worthy quote! Luanne is one of my favorite writers, whose novels are full of great characters and truly emotional conflicts. If you could all see me now, you'd see me squee-ing like a fan-girl!

May 9, 2010

Friends who know me as an author are often puzzled to find out that I was once a chemist. In fact, when I wrote my first novel, I was studying for a Ph.D. at Stanford University. That kind of smarty-points revelation tends to grind conversations to a halt . . . so for a long time I kept mum. Being a romance writer was eccentric enough; no use muddying the waters.

But really the situation wasn't as crazy as it sounds. While I was in graduate school, teaching, studying, and working in a lab, the creative side of my brain was simply withering. Writing a dramatic story about lovers in revolutionary France was just, well, therapy. The real surprise came when a charming editor in New York decided to pay me for my labors. Until then, I hadn't even considered the option of writing as a career.

If I hadn't met a certain hot rugby player, I probably would have tinkered at both professions forever. We'd connected the year before, in the last few weeks before we'd graduated from our east coast college. Apparently smitten, he decided to move across the country to be with me in California. After he finished graduate school, he made me an offer. If I'd move back east, he said, with a twinkle, he'd support me while I continued my burgeoning writing career. But here's the catch: I had to marry him.

Then, in a glorious flash—and that's how I remember a few years in Manhattan—I was living in the wilds of New Jersey, married, mortgaged, and with multiple small children. Though I had twelve books to my credit, writing fell to the wayside as I focused on the care and feeding of the lovely little moppets who filled my days. But writers never really stop gathering material, and suburban family life turned out to be richer than I'd imagined. When my kids entered school, I was bursting with ideas, and I knew I had to write again. THE PROPER CARE AND MAINTENANCE OF FRIENDSHIP is the result.

As for my former career . . . well, I still devour the science section of the Tuesday New York Times. I read, wistfully, of chemists working on breakthroughs in drug synthesis. But writing has afforded me the opportunity to work and stay at home. For my kids, and for me, that has been the greatest blessing.