A little about me. . .
From a very young age, I was enamored by books. I loved stories, read them voraciously; however, writing them came later. As a teen, my English teacher hated the first ‘real’ story I wrote. So, I shifted my focus to poetry.
My on-again-off-again relationship with poems ebbed and flowed throughout adulthood. I wrote them, shelved them, forgot about them, revisited them, and continued the process while I went about daily minutiae. As I wound my way through life, priorities changed along the road. An unending laundry list of responsibilities all needed a piece of my time: a spouse who shared my future, children who needed to be raised, employers who demanded my allegiance, housework that never stayed done, bills that had to be paid, plus so many more things for which I was perpetually accountable.
But my heart always returned to the passion I sustained for the written word. In the nineties, I joined a creative writing group, where I learned that I could write short fiction. Much to my surprise, one of those stories morphed into a novel when the characters decided they had much more to say. Time spent in the company of members of my writing group, Writer’s Ink of Central Indiana, has been invaluable to my growth and development as a writer.
I have two published poems, and I ranked among the top 100 winners in the 1995 Writer’s Digest Writing Competition in the Non-Rhyming Poem category. My first collaboration, Like Him with Friends Possess’d, with my co-author, Toni Cantrell, was accepted by Belfire Press, with final publication date of July 2011.
Like all fellow travelers on Life’s path, I wear many hats—often times, several concurrently. I rarely remove my Writer’s hat, even in the shower. In addition to my literary persona, I attempt to live as normal a life as possible in this day and age. I make my home on a mini-farm in central Indiana where a full crew of feline fur babies have allowed me to carve out a small space as my own. Upon the death of my husband in 2004, I abandoned the notion of maintaining livestock on the property. Nevertheless, an ample supply of wildlife in the area continues to keep me entertained, and I frequently derive inspiration for writing simply by taking in the sights and sounds of nature.
Although I retired from my day job as a secretary at a local university, I am always busy and never bored. Now, I fully understand retirees who claim that they don’t know how they were able to get anything done at home while they were in the workforce.
I am the mother of two sons, the grandmother of one grandson, a sister, an aunt, a friend to many, a nature nut, a critter-crazy eccentric, and a lover of music of all genres. (Remember the many hats? Newsflash: we are all exquisitely complex creatures made up of multiple layers.)
Loving family members and friends—to whom I will be eternally grateful for not only their understanding and support, but also for sharing me with the characters whose stories I write—are true blessings. And I’m thankful they haven’t seen fit to have me committed since I insist that my characters are real people who converse, argue, laugh, cry, and live their lives in my head. No matter where I am or what I do, my characters always go with me. They’ve become such a significant part of my life that I’ve even considered getting them their own car seat.
No matter how Life tries to derail me, I always manage to get back on track and return to my passion for writing, even if only for small snippets of time. My obsession for participating in NaNoWriMo has provided me with a cache of novels in the queue, anxiously awaiting edit and, ultimately, publication. Which, dear friends, is where I should now turn my attention.