In second grade, my teacher gave out an award at the end of the year to each student. Mine was the Top Author award. I thought, Yes, I am an author! and still remember walking up to accept it, knowing I would never be anything else.

Making a living as an author is super hard. I wrote five books before anybody knew who I was. I had three little kids, and my books weren’t selling. But I didn’t know how to do anything else, so I just kept going, and with my sixth book I got lucky.

Since the year 2000, I’ve been writing a book a year. And there were seven years in there where I wrote two books—even in 2014, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Cancer was very challenging. I had also gotten divorced a year earlier. But the outpouring of love and support from my readers was astonishing. And I had people waiting for my next book. That really kept my head above water, because I couldn’t curl up in a ball and cry.

The Five-Star Weekend [June 13] is my 22nd Nantucket summer novel. Next year, 2024, will be my last. My readers want the same thing every year, but I am running out of ideas. I don’t want the quality of the books to fall.

In the meantime, I’ve signed a contract to write two books with my daughter, Shelby [Cunningham], that will be set at a New England boarding school. She’s in boarding school, and every single day her phone calls are drama, drama, drama, so I said to her, “Oh my goodness, we have to write a novel about that.”

I’d also want to focus on the thing I love the most, which is reading. I put all the books I love on my Instagram, which has, like, 136,000 followers. I’d prefer a bigger platform, say, a books podcast. My focus will be on touting really good writing, but propulsive plot also.

Getting to this age was like stepping up a ladder to where you can see things more clearly. In your 20s, you’re figuring it out. In your 30s and 40s, in my case, you’re just in the thick of your career and the parenting is so intense. But I feel like my writing is better now, because with every year you gain wisdom and some serenity. I hope that it will keep going as I get older. —As told to Christina Ianzito