About Me...

Married: Yes, very. I highly recommend it—if you're married to the right person.

Kids: Yes. Mine by love 'n marriage. I won't call them stepkids.

Education: Bachelor's degree in Art. Studied at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, graduated from Westfield State in Westfield, Massachusetts. I could easily be a professional student. I find the atmosphere of academia strangely intoxicating (except for exam time).

Occupation: Medical Transcription. It helps pay the family bills, plus for my writing habit.

This Writer's Journey...

Me? I always made up stories with my friends. My first claim to fame occurred in fourth grade. I paid homage to the great Nancy Drew by writing a little story called "The Mystery of the Uranium Cave." I'm not sure what the big deal with uranium was. It sounded mysterious, plus my two smart girl heroines had neato gadgets to tell them there was uranium...in the cave. Then the librarian at school told me about a county film festival for elementary school students. Perfect! I loved to draw, too, so I used the wax pencils on opaque film strips. I had to make a recording of the story. That meant I needed a sidekick, so I drafted a friend to do the voice of the other character. We won FIRST PLACE in Worcester County and went on to the Maryland State competition. Didn't win, but I had a great trip to Baltimore County.

Those of us who write have learned to listen to the stories and characters who come to life in our heads. The rest of the world are called Normals, who often scratch their heads at our antics. They simply don't understand the creative process. Some envy it. Some fear it. (Don't get her mad! Maybe she'll put you in a book!—Not really)

Then I spent time trying NOT to get in trouble by passing horse stories around class. One of my old friends from the Maryland days looked me up a few years ago. She asked if I remembered the stories. Of course. I loved the library—at school, in town. I wore out the card and read just about anything the librarian recommended.

My mother read to me before I was born, so it's not surprising I have a lifelong love of books. When I was 11, I reached a milestone when someone lent me their set of The Chronicles of Narnia. Even now, Dad and I make references to the books when something reminds us of Narnia. Unlike Susan, who grew up too soon, I still love the land of Aslan. The last paragraph of The Last Battle still brings me to tears. It reminds me of the hope I have, that this place here is only Shadowlands. We learn to love Him here, so we can love Him better there.

I hit a megabreakthrough when I wrote a little love story—a Christian love story—called Home For Christmas. It makes me embarrassingly squeamish to read it on one hand. But otherwise I see the passion and earnestness with which I crafted the story. I still remember my fingers flying over the keys of Mom's aqua blue Smith Corona typewriter when Jo fell off her horse and went missing in the snowy woods on Christmas Eve back in the Great Depression. (Yes, Jo is a tip of the hat to Little Women.) I think a writer by the name of Janette Oke came out with a set of books sometime after that. Back then I knew nothing about the process—but I knew the power of story.

High school swallowed me up. I was too busy trying to survive and stay involved. Then the family left Maryland and moved to Massachusetts. I took advanced Junior and Senior English which burnt me out on literature for a good long while. I didn't write for fun. I thought I wanted to be an artist.

Life happened, and I found myself in Texas, married, an instant mom, yet still a reader and dabbling writer. I never thought of actually writing a book to get published. Then two things happened. First, a friend lent me a Christian "romance" that was so awful I knew I'd have written a different ending. Not long after that, I discovered Terri Blackstock's Sun Coast Chronicles in our town library. Now those books made me WANT to write—like her. Real people, real problems, real faith, and real God. No tacked-on contrived endings. No neat little package like a sitcom where problems are solved in thirty minutes. But her books took me on an exciting ride and wow—snuck a message in the back door.

Then in 1998 I found a group of writers on line who welcomed me in and taught me some of what they knew. I went on to see most of them published. I started attending monthly chats in author Lynn Coleman's chat room. I met other people like me. When Lynn told us she was starting a group for serious writers in 2000, I jumped in as soon as they allowed registration.

The rest "is history," still being written.

All this to say, if you have a story, and a dream, you can tell it. Not everyone is a novelist. But never let the story be untold. Tell it. You don't know where you'll end up.