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Short Version I grew up in Grand Haven, Michigan, where I spent summers picking blueberries and winters falling down on skis. In 1984, I graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a Bachelor of Science degree in geology. While my pursuit of the degree was interesting, a knowledge of how biaxial crystals behave in convergent polarized light has proven completely useless in my career as a CAD technician for various surveying and civil engineering companies. Ah, well. My Life as a Writer Once upon a time, I won an elementary school poetry contest. The prize was getting up in front of the entire school to read my poem aloud. If the intention was to scare me away from publicly admitting I wrote, it worked like a charm.
The B minus in my college creative writing class didn’t help. Despite a lifetime of avaricious reading, writing my own novel didn’t occur to me until the ripe old age of thirty seven. I’d just left a management job and taken a position in which I had very few responsibilities. Within two months, I was writing daily, devouring books on writing, soaking up Julia Cameron’s three pages a day advice, living Ann Lamott’s shitty first drafts, and following Robert Ray’s schedule in The Weekend Novelist. A year later, I had a novel in hand – a romance with elements of mysticism. I told the tale of Cinderella after the ball. I wrote of disparate cultures and loneliness and hard-won joy. I wrote and wrote and wrote. And it sucked. But, hey, I’d finished a novel! And I don’t really care for romances, anyway. I chose that genre only because I thought it would be easier (hah!) than writing what I love to read – mysteries. So I wrote book number two. A mystery. That, too, sucked. Not as badly as my failed romance, but a sucky book is a sucky book. Next! (For books number three and four, see above paragraph. Book four point five is awaiting my return.) Book number five, a thriller currently titled True Aim, does not suck. I have high hopes this time around, high enough to try and get the thing published and this time I won't quit trying until I've sent out queries to 100 agents. Long Version You didn't really want to know more, did you? |
Except for one very long year spent in Connecticut, I've lived in Michigan all my life. Currently, I live on a lake (the photo above is the view from our dock steps) with my husband and two cats, and I now spend winters and summers falling down on skis.| | Home | For Writers | Links | Up North | Bio | Email me | |