Allow me to introduce myself. As you can
see from this picture of me at the age of 6, not all of us were blessed with being cute as
a child. That (along with the fact that my family moved on a frequent basis because
of my father's job) made it hard to build lasting friendships. I was left with
my three younger sisters as my primary source of entertainment but unfortunately, their
sole purpose in life back then was to get me into trouble. Consequently, I spent a
lot of time on my own and books became some of my best friends.
I suppose it was my love of reading that led to my love
of writing. I first indulged my writing passion, as do many young girls, by
recording my deepest, darkest and most secret thoughts in a diary. But it didn't
take long for my younger sisters to figure out where I hid the danged thing and how to
pick the lock, so I quickly abandoned that project. Still, I was compelled to write.
I dabbled with short stories and made quick enemies of many of my classmates when I
got excited over theme assignments and essay tests. When I was seventeen, I sent off
my first short story, which was flung back at me in record time with a kindly rejection.
So began a long and sordid history of accumulating an assortment of rejections from
a variety of sources.
Realizing my dreams of supporting myself as a writer were
about as flimsy as the lock on my diary, I decided to go into nursing instead. At
the age of 23, I had my son, Ryan. Somewhere in there I had a marriage or two and a
divorce or two (okay three, but who's counting?) and worked at advancing my career and
raising my son. Between the demands of career and motherhood, I had little time left
over for writing. But I stuck with it nonetheless, working toward making it into the
Guinness Book of Records as the person with the greatest number of rejections.
My son is grown now and off on his
own. I eventually switched my focus from short fiction to novel length. And
finally, at the age of 40, I sold my first novel, COLD WHITE FURY, to
HarperCollins. Two more suspense novels followed with Harper before I was cut from
their list in 1998 following their purchase of Avon books. My original agent has retired
so I am currently shopping for an agent for two new works: NICK OF TIME, a tale of
paranormal suspense similar to my first three books, and THE VICARIOUS LIVER, a fun-filled
mystery and the first in an intended series featuring Mattie Winston, a
nurse-turned-deputy coroner in a small Wisconsin town. I'm also working as an ER nurse, a
job that ensures me a steady dose of adrenalin and an endless source of plot ideas. In my
spare time (not much of that!) I play competitive Scrabble, scuba dive, and work with
stained glass. My other writing credits include over 200 published articles, most of them
written for the medical field.
These days I can take all of those deep,
dark secrets I wanted to write in my diary and incorporate them into my books. (It
drives my family nuts when they try to find those secrets, or themselves, hidden within
the stories and characters.) I write what I like most to read—mystery and
suspense. Not surprisingly, given my career choice, my novels all have a medical
flavor to them. They also dabble in those areas of life that have always fascinated
me—the weird, the macabre, and the unexplainable, such as paranormal powers and
extraterrestrial life. And because I love a good adrenaline rush (one of the perks
of both a career in nursing and rearing a child through adolescence is that there are
plenty of those to go around) my books are designed to keep you on the edge of your seat
with your nails gnawed down to a nub. Or at least that's what I hope.
So come along for the ride. I can promise you a
good scare or two, if not from my books then from that picture up above, where, if you
look closely enough, you'll see pencil marks that fill in the places where chunks of my
hair were missing. (And to Mom—those glasses! What were you thinking?)
As for my sisters—Cathy, Laurie, and Amy—who'd
a thought my greatest tormentors would one day be among my greatest supporters?
Allow me to introduce myself. As you can
see from this picture of me at the age of 6, not all of us were blessed with being cute as
a child. That (along with the fact that my family moved on a frequent basis because
of my father's job) made it hard to build lasting friendships. I was left with
my three younger sisters as my primary source of entertainment but unfortunately, their
sole purpose in life back then was to get me into trouble. Consequently, I spent a
lot of time on my own and books became some of my best friends.
