I was but a small girl of probably seven or eight when my grandfather—who owned an insurance agency—gave me a white desk diary. A lot like a daytimer, this book featured a space for every day of the year.

It was then I first fell in love with writing. As is typical of children, I was full of zeal to write  down my thoughts each day. Of course my thoughts were incomplete and I lacked the skill and competence to craft a compelling narrative or articulate deeper feelings.

And yet I persevered. The following Christmas I received another book
and yet another the following year. At age 13 I purchased my first drug store diary, complete with a lock and key. I was a faithful scribe, recording the events which dominated my teenage life: music, school, and BOYS!

And my writing evolved. Soon I was writing research papers and book reports. In high school I was on the annual staff, serving as editor my Senior Year. The next five years I wrote stories for newspapers: college and, as my first job out of school, a weekly paper called “The Eatonville Dispatch.”

Then I went silent for many years. I got married, I held jobs that paid the bills, I became a mother. And I built up a lifetime of experiences.

A dozen years ago I walked into a novel writing class, listened to the stories read aloud for critique by my classmates, and thought to myself “I can write just as well as they can.”

So I took a germ of an idea and I wrote. I refer to my first AND second novels as my practice stories. I read everything I could about how to craft a story, I went to a writer’s conference and, the most important thing of all, I made time to write.

In the intervening years, five of us who were in that class became the anchors for a critique group which still meets most every week. We’ve added and subtracted members over the years but we endure.

Now, with five full length novels completed, the process of publishing beckons. I took the premise of novel number one and rewrote it as one of the titles in the“Delta Rho Chi” series. Although I’m not sure how long the process will take, I do know that one day I will be a published novelist!.

Welcome! And I hope you enjoy my stories.