Betsy Howie doesn't want me to say that writing "Snow," her first novel, was a cathartic -- "I hate that word" -- process for her. She prefers "soothing."

"There is a fair amount of self-therapy in the book," she agreed with a slow nod. "She didn't come to any conclusions that I didn't believe myself."

"She" being a young woman whose marriage collapses after six months and who piles her two cats into a car and leaves New York in the dead of winter. She drives north, to a snowbound log cabin, with some tins of Spam and a plan to "work it out."

Instead of the psychiatrist that she probably needs, she discovers that Vinny, her black-and-white cat, is a talkative soul, while Sophie, the ginger, is a dancer.

True, not every thread in the book is a parallel to Betsy's life, but there are some obvious similarities: The breakups of their marriages and the spherical illnesses centered in their left thighs -- which in Betsy was eventually diagnosed as a malignant tumor -- demonstrate the degree to which she has drawn on her own experiences.

Betsy, on the other hand, never came face to face with a polar bear in her struggle to move on. But you'll have to read the book to find out how the eager-to-please but remarkably dim bear fits into the grand scheme of things.

"I didn't set out to write a novel," she said. "It was a very organic process; there is a little middle essay, and the third part evolved into what was clearly more than just making my cats talk to people, but it wasn't a complete piece in itself.

"I was trying to work out what it was exactly when it sort of struck me that this thing I had written two years prior had been a kind of journal to keep myself sane through what ended up being a six-month marriage," she said. "Really the 'Snow' section is a meltdown, and it now pieces together in an orthodox way.

"It was written in the first person for a reason," she agreed. "Obviously it takes fantastical directions, but certainly the issues she's struggling with and why she's struggling with them come from my life."

"Snow" first appeared on bookshop shelves in the U.S. in February 1998 and has since done "respectable literary figures," said 37-year-old Betsy, who lives in Connecticut, adding that the sale of 4,000 copies is "frightening" in terms of a success in the literary world.

She is also quick to point out that she is not now a millionairess, which is why she is still doing television commercials -- American Express, Wendy's and Sprite among others -- and wrote and recently starred in a highly acclaimed off-Broadway musical, "Cowgirls."

The project in the pipeline at present is her second novel -- titled "Family Solitaire" -- which has taken three years to write and now needs just a few finishing touches.

"And it's in the third person, I'm proud to say," she added, even though she has again drawn on many of her personal experiences in the story.

Another book, the children's book "Welcome To The Circus Hotel, Hollywood DiVecchio," is being touted around Hollywood, and there is the possibility of a spinoff series.

But she is not optimistic that "Snow" will ever make it to the big screen.

"You're not going to get anyone Hollywood-wise to do it and it's never going to be a commercial film, but I think it would make a beautiful movie if the right filmmaker found it." And she always carries a copy of her book in her bag wherever she goes just in case she bumps into the movie world's "Mr. Right."

But there is one more thing that puzzles me. Of all the languages in the world, why is Japanese the only language that "Snow" has so far been translated into?

"I have Kyoko, the translator, to thank for that," Betsy said. Kyoko Michishi read an English-language review of the book and, as a big cat-lover and "quite a history as a feminist," according to Betsy, saw a range of issues that appealed to her. She approached her publisher in Japan and the outcome is "I'm in Love With a Cat in a Tuxedo."

Even though she didn't think up the Japanese title for her book -- and had trouble finding her name in unfamiliar characters on the cover -- she says it has grown on her no end.