About Me

In Midwest small-town America where I grew up, options were limited for girls: become a nurse, teacher, secretary, or get married right out of high school. When I was six I wanted to be a nurse; at ten, a teacher. But certainly was never going to be a secretary. How dull! Musically talented, I didn’t have the drive to major in performance, and didn’t want to teach. And none of the local boys looked like husband material.

I really didn’t want to do any of those things. What I wanted to do was write. At the age of ten, when I exhausted the supply of novels in the library, I started writing my first novel, a mystery with the intriguing title, October the Third. Sixty-five handwritten pages later, my brother found it, made fun of it, and I tore up the whole thing.

But I didn’t lose the itch. A high school English teacher urged me to major in journalism, but the only “journalism” I had seen consisted of the local weekly newspaper. “The mayor’s daughter was lovely in a fingertip veil. . . Rev. and Mrs. Jacobs spent a week at. . .Maude Adams is recovering from. . .” Not the things I wanted to write about; I wanted to tell stories. Why should I take journalism?

I worked as a nurse’s aide in a tiny hospital. College led me to another state where I met a dashing young man whom I married--I was almost nineteen! College took a back seat in the interest of affording groceries. Untrained but a fast learner, I took a job as secretary, soon promoted to executive assistant to the vice-president. Primary qualification: I didn’t smoke. Far from being dull, it was a fascinating position.

Several pages down the calendar there were babies, two sons. While their antics were fodder for a writer’s inspiration, I didn’t make time to record them. I was adding to the household income by teaching piano. In what seemed a few months’ time the boys were grown and married. Then it was back to nursing a bedbound mother-in-law for fourteen years.

I finally decided “what I wanted to be when I grew up.” I’ve had inspirational pieces published in five collections (see BOOKS page). Instead of fiction, my first full-length book, co-authored with an associate, addressed the serious issue of abuse of the elderly. It’s currently in revision for a second printing! My first novel, The Tenth Month, is completed and two more are in progress.

God has His own version of the practical joke. I did all those things I said I’d never do! But, God willing, I'll never stop writing!

How about you?