Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I was born and raised in San Diego, California and earned a BA in English from San Diego State University and an MLS from UCLA. I began my career as a reference and collection development librarian in the Art and Music Section of the San Diego Public Library and then transferred to the Literature and Languages Section, where I had the pleasure of managing the Central Library’s Fiction collection and initiating fiction order lists for the entire library system. Although I also enjoy reading biography, memoir, and history, fiction remains my first love. In addition to the three R’s—reading, writing, and research—I enjoy Scrabble, movies, and travel.
My earliest ambition was to be a “book maker” and I wrote my first story, “Judy and the Fairies,” with a plot stolen from a comic book, at the age of six. I broke into print in college with a story in the San Diego State University literary journal, The Phoenix, but most of my magazine publications came after I left the library to spend more time on my writing
My stories have been published in Eclectica, The Binnacle, The Nassau Review, Orbis, Thema Literary Journal, Verandah Literary & Art Journal, Short Story America, San Diego Writers’ Monthly, The Storyteller Anthology, I-70 Review, and the anthologies Short Story America, Vol. 2 and The Captive and the Dead. Four stories, including three as yet unpublished, received honorable mention in the Short Story America Prize for Short Fiction contests. A romance novel, Seventeen Days, has just been published by Wild Rose Press, and I am currently revising another one for the same publisher.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Seventeen Days. The hero came first, inspired by video of Cruz on the soap opera Santa Barbara looking very sexy in a tool belt. The fishing village setting was inspired by my admiration for Elisabeth Ogilvie’s Bennett’s Island series, and the heroine’s anti-war sentiments by World War I combat scenes in the film Legends of the Fall.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I don’t know if it’s unusual, but I cross out what I’ve scribbled down in my notebook when I’ve used it in the story? It helps make it clear what I haven’t used yet. I consider a lizard my muse and Huxley, a writer mouse from Starbucks, my sometime collaborator.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
A major influence early on was the Williamsburg series by Elswyth Thane. It’s now very dated and politically incorrect, but I still see echoes of it in my writing. Ditto Robert A. Heinlein’s “books for boys.” Even though I almost never write science fiction, I quoted him in “Vacation Hold,” (Thema, August 2017: Missing Letters,) and named a character after one of his. Also see Elisabeth Ogilvie above, and I’ve written several captivity stories, including “Rumpelstiltskin,” (http://www.eclectica.org/v22n2/griffin.html), undoubtedly influenced by memoirists Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart, Katie Beers, Amanda Berry, et al.
What are you working on now?
Promoting Seventeen Days and revising a romantic suspense novel for the same publisher.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m new at promotion, so this remains to be seen.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Read! Read anything and everything. The more different styles you read, the more easily you will develop your own. Read good writing, but even bad writing can teach you something. Write what you want to write. Don’t worry about writing in chronological or logical order; it can all be sorted out later. Write for yourself and polish for editors. Don’t give up. Sometimes a story will find a home when you least expect it.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Richard P. Brickner, in his memoir My Second Twenty Years, said that a novel is an ocean to its author, but a mere drink of water to a reader. It reminds me not to take it personally if a reader doesn’t value my drink of water–he or she may not even be thirsty.
What are you reading now?
A Higher Call by Adam Makos, a true story of two World War II pilots, one German and the other American.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Revising Whirlwind for the Wild Rose Press, and then I hope to finish a story about two couples thrown together in a mountain cabin.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Found and Still Waters by Jennifer Lauck, Against Wind and Tide by Anne Lindbergh, and Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
Author Websites and Profiles
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