I am one of those people who go to brain-storming sessions and have the most ideas in the room. I don’t say this to brag, but only to give you a glimpse as to how my mind works.

I owe all of my creative abilities to a boring childhood. When I had nothing to do on the vegetable farm where I was raised as a kid, I went outside and made my own fun. My parents either couldn’t afford, or had no interest in buying many toys for me, so I was left to create my own. A doll was a handful of twigs tied together with corn husk hair, and a dandelion served as a head. A corner of our massive backyard garden became a doll house with rooms divided by bits of straw and sticks, rock furniture and worms and lady bugs as visitors.

In the winter, my brother and I built igloos, and in the summer, we played in the two massive maple trees in our front yard. We each had our own tree, and we would compete to see who could climb higher.

And then there was the “old school house.” Past the cornfields about ½ block away from our house was an abandoned schoolhouse. The place was definitely haunted, or at least that’s what the older kids told us. The place was dark and half demolished, but the desks and chalkboard were still intact. We would sneak in that place and play school, until we heard some sort of noise we couldn’t decipher, and then we were out of there! The run back home was just as creepy, as we had to push our way past thick rows of sky-high corn stalks and hope that our feet were taking us in the right direction.

My imagination was on overload at such a young age, that I believe it etched rivers of creative ability through my brain, allowing me to tap into “outside-of-the-box” thinking with little, to no effort.

I won’t even get started describing my nightly dreams, which are on another level of vivid.

I graduated with a BS in Graphic design, with a minor in creative writing, but I didn’t write professionally for some time. Instead, I went to work for an advertising agency as a graphic designer, and then an art director.

Then I had kids.

Well, that changed everything, because I really wanted to be there to raise them by myself, and fortunately I was able to live very frugally to make that happen until my husband started making decent money as an airline pilot. I would read to my kids, and I couldn’t believe how many books were absolute junk. I went as far as changing the text, just to capture their interest, and then I thought, I can do better! And I did.

I presently have the completed manuscripts of a dozen well-written children’s books in my possession, with no plans to publish them. Not that I didn’t try at one time when I was motivated and ambitious. Trust me, I went to great lengths to woo dozens of N.Y.-based publishers with my brilliant picture books, but I was just never lucky enough to realize that dream. When I looked at the percentages of books that get published in the children’s book genre, I became discouraged and eventually gave up.

When I decided to make a living at writing, I got my copyediting certification at UCSD. I wrote feature articles for newspapers and conservation groups and ended up becoming a regular feature writer for Young Rider Magazine. I was a natural fit for this role, as I was an avid horseback rider who rode every day and had vaulted as a pre-teen. Vaulting is like the kind of trick riding you see in the circus. Horses were my life for many years, even after I had kids when I purchased my first gaited horse in Tennessee.

I also tried my hand at poetry, and complied a collection which I submitted to the San Diego Book Awards Association. I ended up winning first place, which gave me a bit of validation as a writer who had promise.

When my first grader came home and cried because she said she was “afraid of cocaine,” I of course stepped in to see what was actually being taught at our local schools. Apparently, it was Red Ribbon Week, a five-day effort help kids make healthy choices and avoid the temptation to use drugs. Her teacher thought it was important to scare kids with graphic details about drug abuse as a way to ensure that they didn’t do them. Mind you, these were six-year-olds. When I approached her, she told me that kids do drugs early on, and I better pull my head out of the sand! I figured I had two choices: take her out of that school, or try and make a change so that she and other children would have the tools to make wise decisions at a young age (and for the rest of their lives) without scaring and threatening them. The result was a detailed, grade-appropriate curriculum I wrote called Character Counts. I broke down each day of a five-day school week into different virtues such as honesty, leadership and bravery. The program included crafts and activities and a positive message to inspire kids to make healthy choices. I presented the curriculum, which I offered to the district for free by the way, and the responses were, “Oh my gosh we really need this. It’s fantastic! But, we have to stick with what we’ve been doing because of there is too much red tape involved.”

The Catholic schools I took my program to, loved it and actually paid me for bringing them such a great program to use during Red Ribbon Week. The YMCA also hired me to write an extensive character development program after that.

In 2006 when my husband’s airline was threating to go bankrupt, I thought that I’d try and put my skills to work with a real job. That led to me being hired as a copywriter for a large ad agency, and eventually being promoted to Senior Copywriter.

I decided to self-publish a middle-grade fiction novel called Cry For The Moon in 2013, which serendipitously resulted in my reuniting with my estranged father after not seeing him for 45 years!

Long story short, my parents divorced when I was 12 and I never saw my dad again, except for two or three short visits which didn’t go well because he cried the entire time. The courts said “no more,” and that was it. Little did I know that he was a manic depressant, which was one of a handful of reasons my mom left him.

Anyways, in 2017 his girlfriend at the time, who was into genealogy, decided to help him find me. She Googled my married name and my photo popped up. I was signing a book for a little kid, and she could read the title of the book; Cry For The Moon. She purchased the book on Amazon and she and my father read it. The story was fiction, but it was based on a child who tries to heal her depressed father. Yes, my father was the subject of this book and he recognized himself in the story immediately. He did some more digging and (again, long story short) we were able to meet in person and mend old wounds shortly before he passed away. It’s a beautiful story and I sometimes feel that this alone may have been the reason I was supposed to write.

I have found a new love for writing, and its all about the thrill, the suspense and the excitement of creating a fast-paced, engaging story that readers can’t put down. This is my lane, and I am so happy to share my crazy imagination with the rest of the world.

Enjoy!!