I wrote my first novel in second grade on my father’s Underwood Typewriter.  It consisted of approximately thirteen chapters of two to three sentences each.  Around the same time, I started keeping a diary with such scintillating facts as what I’d eaten and where I’d gone. Over the years, my stories took a more creative bent and the diaries developed into journals.  Throughout college and my early years of teaching English/Language Arts, I focused on professional writing, with contributions to teaching texts and literature journals.  And then, as Anais Nin said, “the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”  I realized that all I ever really wanted to do was write and threw myself wholeheartedly into the effort.  Daily practice, institutes on writing, and writing groups all became part of my repertoire, as well as submissions and rejections.

My current projects:

• A memoir about my experiences with postpartum depression

• Next in Line (working title): A young adult novel about Dmitri, a seventeen year-old who must reconcile his desire to be a sculptor with his sense of duty to family tradition

• various literary short stories – fiction that explores motherhood, mental illness, and the travails of the modern married woman

Other projects:

• Larry the Lizard (available for representation), a children’s picture book in which Larry anxiously holds onto his tail until he realizes there’s nothing to worry about

• completed manuscripts for multiple children’s picture books

• working copy of Between the Lines, a novel in which Kathryn suffers a spiritual crisis to find her place in the world and move beyond depression and anxiety

• Development of an adult novel fictionally portraying a real event from my family’s history

Blogging:

In addition to finding me here every Tuesday and Thursday – or more – you can also read my work at the following sites:

• A Manic World

• A Canvas of the Minds