I started writing complex sentences, with subjects and predicates and clauses, when I was just four years old.

I didn’t know this was unique. I didn’t know that being put into preschool in 1970 was not the norm. I didn’t know, in the moment when my teacher gave me colored chalk to prove my early talent at the blackboard, that I wasn’t actually in trouble.

I thought I was failing.

When I discovered I wasn’t failing, but that, instead, I had this special gift to write, I knew my life’s purpose: writing would be the occupation that would drive my life. It didn’t matter if I got famous or rich by it, I simply needed to do it.

In 2024, I’m still walking that path. The short version of a lifelong story of writing pursuits is that I wrote and wrote and wrote throughout childhood, perhaps as therapy, perhaps for escape, perhaps because I couldn’t not write.

Gratefully, teachers along the way supported my work; that external validation kept me going. Thank you Mr. Tauschek, Mrs. Wooding, Ms. Nordlund.

I did the college newspaper thing, earned a liberal arts degree in journalism (magazine editing and publishing curriculum) from Columbia in 1990. A few years later, after working for a suburban publishing house in Chicago and freelancing as a food writer, I started a family and that’s when I decided I didn’t want to wait to be retired to begin a fiction writing career.

Along the way, I:

• launched a 10-year-long publishing project, Margin: Exploring Modern Magical Realism. Yes,  you read that correctly: I became a publisher of literary writing while I still had two kids in diapers.
• took (and continue to take) classes in all kinds of writing as well as attended conferences, participated in writing groups.
• became a poet. The intention was to become a better prose writer, but I ended up liking it so much that my poetry life was born.
• started (and finished to successive drafts) several novels:
  • The Chalk Match, a YA novel with magical realism elements
  • Fiddlehead’s Odyssey, my first and successful attempt at NaNoWriMo (I’ve succeeded 3 times)
  • Leafminers, a literary novel with magical realism elements
  • Manifest Destiny, a mainstream “road trip” novel
  • Ophelia To The Third, a magical realist family saga
  • Lost & Found, the start of a paranormal mystery series
• ran an editorial services and creativity coaching business, Writer’s Rainbow Literary Services LLC
• served my literary community as conference organizer for Field’s End
• taught blogging workshops

The next few years strike me now as a bit of a blur, and now I know why (spoiler alert: MS).

Reality has a way of stubbornly reasserting itself just as you become comfortable with the way you’ve arranged your life. I would not learn I had MS until 2013, which unhappily coincided with my return to college to become a sleep technologist. These twin milestones brought big change to my life, inspiring fresh inquiry into the neurological mysteries of the brain and of dreams, sleep disorders, mental health, and health literacy.

That led to a different trajectory for me as:

• a patient advocacy and education columnist and “influencer” for multiple healthcare communities
• contract writing as a blogger and learning module producer for organizations and business owners in the sleep health community (including a short stint as a C-suite content executive for an inbound marketing company)
• the publisher and content creator for sleep health education clearinghouse, SleepyHeadCENTRAL.com.

Here I am, full circle… at age 59, now retired and back to writing about the things I love as well as pursuing some new things that I have come to be passionate about.

• My book, Intention Tremor, chronicled my life following my MS diagnosis in 2021.
• In 2024, Aqueduct Press released my first story collection, Cul de Sac Stories.
• I’ve become a podcaster; the short story collection, Rain Shadows, which my co-host Clay Vermulm and I wrote in “real time” for Beneath the Rain Shadow in 2024, will be released in 2025. I also have designs on a poetry film podcast in 2026: Cinematopoeia. Stay tuned!
• I made my first poetry film, “Look Up,” which has appeared (as of May 2025) in two six film festivals.
• Other writing projects on my desk include more poetry collections, more short fiction collections, an essay collection, and two speculative novels (Eminent Domain and The Flare).
• Other media projects on my desk include more poetry films, a short documentary, and a short narrative feature.

Life these days is full as ever.

(Do creatives ever retire? Why would they? I love writing so much, I’ll die with my arthritic fingers glued to my laptop keyboard, I’m certain.)

In podcast interviews, I am often led to recall that day in front of the blackboard with the box of colored chalk, perhaps THE critical defining moment in my life (even more than having children or receiving an MS diagnosis). It was that moment that brought me to this place in the present: working with words, surrounded by words, living through words, in so many ways and with so many different people. I’m still tracing loops in blue and orange, sending colored dust into the air. I couldn’t be happier.

Thanks for traveling through this writer’s wilderness.

First writing project ever: “The Island of the Giant Crabs,” a short story derivative of the Jason and the Argonauts movies of the 60s. That was 1972.

First publication: an illustrated poem in the school newsletter, when I was in 2nd grade (also in 1972). It was a humorous piece about butterflies in Canada. In direct competition for this status is the cinquain that Reader’s Digest published when I was in high school.

First writing job (unpaid): Articles for the Columbia River High School newspaper, 1982.

First piece of journalism published: A feature on Mother’s Day for a local circular in Vancouver, WA, 1985.

First paid writing job: Internship with Hill & Knowlton for the academic year 1989-1990, where I wrote all kinds of articles and department content for their custom publishing division (in magazines such as Ford Times and Discovery).

First major credit: A short piece on the opinion page of the Chicago Tribune, January 1, 1990.

First short story published: “A Fish Story” in Hair Trigger XIII, 1991.

First poem published: “Driftwood” in Moon Journal, 1997.

A dozen favorite writers (because I am a voracious reader): Ray Bradbury (my number one muse), Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Louise Erdrich, Janet Frame, Sherwood Anderson, Carson McCullers, Patrick Chamoiseau, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Aimee Bender, Albert Camus and Katherine Vaz.

A dozen books I’ve read more than once: A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry), The Bone People (Keri Hulme), Wonderfull (William Neil Scott), Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman), Burning Down the House (Charles Baxter), One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabria Garcia Marquez), The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (JRR Tolkien), The Beet Queen (Louise Erdich), Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury), The Alchemist (Paolo Coelho) and The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood).

A dozen thinkers and doers I admire: Oliver Sacks, William Dement, Mother Teresa, Amelia Earhart, Jane Addams, Chief Seattle, Harriett Tubman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Malcolm Gladwell, Harold Weiner, and Daniel Goleman.

Other interests: Cooking, herb gardening, backyard wildlife, camping, hiking, feminism, parenthood, drum corps (as a spectator), making jewelry, amateur photography, the Pacific Northwest at large, Seahawks, stand-up comedy, podcasts, independent film and LAUGHTER.