My stories are seeded in the South where I grew up. Stories have always been a part of my life, forming me at an early age. Some of my favorite family memories are sitting around a freezer of homemade ice cream and listening to my grandfather spin stories of his youth and my family’s adventures. My father continued that custom on lazy Sunday afternoons sitting under our big oak tree in the backyard. My mom gave me my love of reading. She would take me to the library every week for a huge haul of books. I would check-out the most books that you could at one time and be done with them by the next trip, ready to browse the rows and run my hands along the spines of the books again. I continued the family tradition by making up stories to help our daughter fall asleep when she was small, if our normal book reading ritual at bedtime didn’t get her there.
Life interrupted my plans to write and I haven’t regretted one minute of the wonderful life I’ve lived to this point. Yes, there have been hard times, but they have given me strength and courage and love. The good times have far outweighed the bad. When we moved back to North Carolina in 2003, my desire to get back to writing was pushing at me, but I couldn’t find the right direction to start. My daughter suggested I start a blog. So I did, and began to blog book reviews while dusting off my writing skills. Now, I am finally writing novels. I have several in the works and one finished manuscript which I hope to share with you all soon.
I have a BSBA in Business from East Carolina University. I worked as a Human Resource Director at a Home Health Agency before becoming a full-time mom. I became involved with the PTA and met a lot of nice women who I was fortunate enough to share hard work and fun with. We moved frequently around the southern United States, gathering friends and learning new traditions until the next transfer. After leaving the corporate world, my husband and I moved back to North Carolina with our daughter and brought our own business in 2003. We wanted to get closer to our families and help them when they needed us. We ran our sign company for 15+ years and again my time was well spent in listening to the stories of our customers and finding creative ways to help them promote their business.
Here I am, spending more time on my writing and finally pursuing the advice I received in a fortune cookie my first year back in North Carolina. It read, “Someday you will write a book” and now I have. I write southern fiction with a touch of mystery. I’m a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA), the North Carolina Writers’ Network, and a terrific writer’s group. I live in a small North Carolina coastal town where I write and read as much as I can. Otherwise, I love to golf and go to the beach with my husband. We also spend time with our family and friends (when there’s not a pandemic.)