I was born in the rural, coal mining town of Welch, West Virginia in 1965. I remember running up and down the mountainside from one relative to another, chasing fireflies and playing with the rabbits in my uncle’s rabbit coop. Biscuits and gravy, pinto beans and cornbread, and blackberry cobbler still make me melt happily.

After West Virginia, my family moved around a lot. I grew up mostly in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The woods of Pennsylvania seemed magical to me and is where my family spent a lot of time camping. It had a great influence on my belief system. My stepfather taught at LSU when I was in high school so I spent my adolescence in Eunice, Louisiana. That’s when my love affair with Louisiana began.

Growing up, I continued the trend of moving around. I’ve lived in Cincinnati, Pittsburgh (Go Pens!), Manhattan, and the city of my broken heart, New Orleans. I’m now on the west coast for the first time and loving it.

I’ve had jobs as a technical writer that have taken me to Tel Aviv, Oslo and London. I’ve enjoyed traveling and just people watching. The best past time for a writer.

I was a voracious reader as a child and wrote and staged plays for my family and church. My brothers and I read way too many comic books and spent hours at the kitchen table drawing our own adventures in crayon.

When I was 19, my first professional writing attempt was a three-act play. It was a modern re-telling of the not-so-immaculate conception. When a woman walked out of the reading because “God doesn’t have sex!” I knew I was onto something

Years later, I took a workshop at the Writer’s Voice in New York City. The well-published author leading the class screamed at me, saying that the first few chapters to “Pretty” were, well, worthless. Mortified, I ran from the classroom as soon as it was over. Fortunately for me a retired dean from Sarah Lawrence College, who was also in the workshop, chased me down and said, “If you’ve made everyone that angry, you’re doing something right. Don’t stop writing."

I studied writing at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Miami University of Ohio and at the Writer’s Voice in New York City. I took jobs in advertising, publishing, and technical writing. As the typical blocked writer, I did everything but what my heart desired, write fiction.

I returned to New Orleans after my stint in New York City and began writing “Pretty is Just a Face I Make”. It’s based on the year I’d spent as a stripper in the French Quarter earning money for grad school. It was published by AuthorLink press.

I went into the sex industry for the same reason most people do. I was broke. Aside from a good living I discovered quite a bit about myself and humanity in general. I’ve tried to cram it all into 292 pages.

“Pretty” was published in the same month that I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I was really sick for the first few years after the diagnosis. I did very little writing. Most of my focus was on getting healthier.

One of the paths to health was to move to a more temperate climate. It seems to have worked. After Hurricane Katrina took my home in New Orleans, I moved to Oregon. My health is much improved and the writing is going well. I hope to have more for you on these pages and in the bookstores, soon.