Welcome!
The first story I ever wrote was called “Aunt Ant,” and it was the story of an ant who was also an aunt! I was seven.
I’ve been writing ever since. I even went to college and grad school to study writing. I have a B.A. in Creative Writing from Carnegie-Mellon University and and M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Along the way, I held a lot of non-writing jobs that I hated and one or two I loved (See Fast Fun Facts for details). I also got married and had three children.
My kids are mostly grown up now. These days I live with my husband, my cat, Scout, and my dog, Zeke.
That’s What Friends Do is my first published novel.
I am represented by Saba Sulaiman of Talcott Notch Literary Services.
Fast Fun Facts
- I have one sister, two half-sisters, and two step-brothers. That’s me holding my sister in the pic to the right.
- I also have a husband, three pretty grown up kids, and a dog and a cat.
- In the first 19 years of my life, I lived in 17 different homes.
- For the last 19 years, I’ve lived in one house.
- I can’t sing. At all. I even botch “Happy Birthday.”
- My 1 rep max deadlift is 160 pounds.
- I don’t like to run, but I’ve run in five 5K races, and counting. Go figure.
- I foster feral kittens for the Humane Society of Westchester.
- I don’t eat red meat.
- I started working when I was 12, babysitting and cleaning houses.
- My first paycheck job was as the dessert girl in a restaurant kitchen. I prepared the bread baskets and relish trays, made parfaits, and put pie slices onto plates, with or without vanilla ice cream. I smelled like grease and sugar all the time.
- My first job after college was working for a Wall Street bank. I was completely miserable.
- My last full-time job was teaching middle school. I taught English and Social Studies, and loved everything about my job except that I didn’t have any time to write.
- I’ve also worked as a process camera operator, waitress, inventory taker, secretary, perfume saleswoman and hostess on a whale-watching boat.
- I drove 14 hours, with two of my kids, to Sweetwater, TN, to see the total eclipse. It was totally worth it.
