About
Growing up, I was in a bit of a strange place because of my dad. He didn’t come from where we lived. He’d arrived in Texas, via the Army Air Corps, from Another Place: Pennsylvania. Not only did he not want to return there to live once he finished his military service, my mother would not go. So they settled in the small community where she was raised. This meant my mother knew most of the other mothers and dads because she’d gone to school with them herself. I suppose this can be a good news/bad news situation since my first and second grade teachers were also my mother’s.
My dad was a mechanic and later a small business owner. My mother was a bookkeeper with a steel-trap mind and a gift for growing things. She could take a rose cutting, stick it in the ground, tell it to grow, and it would. I’m more mechanic than gardener: I love to sew and create with my hands. I took up reading from an early age, as we were within walking distance to the public library. I also took piano lessons for eleven years and now sing in the church choir. I think that determines the deep line of music which runs through seven of my published books.
I live in a Texas town smaller than the one I grew up in. My home is nearing 100 years old and is the youngster on the block. I’m married to my college beau. Our sons are grown and have delighted us with grandchildren. I still love to read but love to write even more and I’ve been doing so for twenty years.
I encountered an NPR series several years ago entitled This I Believe. It began in the ’50s and featured persons both famous and not who were given a small space of time to say what they believe. I found a book of these essays (at a library sale) and read them, one a night. From some, I found nothing of interest, others I checked to read again. It’s not easy to put what you believe in fewer than two trade paperback pages. But here goes:
I believe in faith, in family, in keeping your word. In what goes around, comes around. Karma, kismet, whatever you wish to call it. I believe in being interested in something outside yourself. I believe we are all stewards of our lives and gifts which God has given us. We need to use them wisely. I believe in faith to heal and comfort. I believe in redemption which is the cornerstone of my Bone Cold—Alive series. I believe in writing what you know. For me, small town Texas for the most part, or people who are from such and find themselves outside their purview. And lastly, I believe in cats.
Yes, cats. Cats to purr, to comfort, to ignore you. Cats to put you in your place because sometimes, someone has to do so. Cats so you can care about something beside yourself. I’ve been surrounded by cat people all my life: my mother, my dad, two elderly neighbors, now deceased, who taught me so much about life and, yes, cats. So that’s why there are photos at the bottom of this page of my cats. Past and present.
My life is the richer for my writing, through new friends and experiences and the sheer pleasure of writing a romance where love triumphs over all else.
Welcome.
My Kitties
