Welcome!

I'm a baby boomer, a psychiatric nurse with 50 years experience, and a former nurse officer in the Army Reserve Nurse Corps. I grew up in a small town in upstate NY as an only child with a funny, loving, and strict mother. My momma raised a very lively straight arrow. 

It's relevant to my writing, so I need to tell you that my favorite book was Gone With the Wind. I refuse to judge it by today's standards. I believe you have to judge by what was happening in the world at the time. Margaret Mitchell was incredibly brave in 1936 to produce that story. To this day, I admire her ability to create memorable characters. Ashley and Rhett are prefectly balanced on the opposite side of masculinity. Ashley seems weak until you remember he endured years of brutal war and was held prisoner in conditions that would kill me. Rhett's bravado is balanced by his underlying sensitivity. Scarlet's strength and beauty are balanced by her totally insane desire for a man not right for her, and her inability to understand anything or anyone unlike her. Sweet little Melanie was a fine thread of steel cable who kept many lives balanced. Even the slaves were written to show that they had their own inner strength, over themselves and the lives of their masters. The ending left me, and every other woman who read it, with a tissue in one hand, yelling 'no'. After over a thousand pages of investment in the story, Mitchell made a perfectly reasonable, 'hard left' ending, to show that actions have consequences, and everyone has their breaking point.

I aspire to be the kind of writer she was with rich characters and sometimes a cliff-hanger ending.  I approach writing like a method actor approaches a new part. I sink into the characters of the people who will support or challenge the action, using my years of mental health expertise. Some characters I create are awful people and some are almost perfect. Most are a bit of both because that's how people are. Once they are real in my head, they tell ME the story and I write it.

I want to engage the reader to love or hate my characters, to laugh unexpectedly, and to need a tissue once in awhile. If you turn pages and wish it wasn't over, I'll be thrilled. My small-town, good girl background flies out the window when the keyboard is in front of me. Then I'm capable of anything. My husband jokes "I sleep next to the woman who wrote that."

Please find a book that appeals to you and give me a try.