Writing isn’t new to me. I’ve been writing something or other since I was a teenager, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Started with poetry which required a special pen and blue paper. And words that made me cry. (That poetry still makes me cry, but for different reasons.) The poetry you will find here is much more recent, thank goodness.

I have kept a journal most of my life. Day-to-day events, what I needed to remember, and, in time, what I had forgotten. Writing is magic. In the last few years, I turned to writing longer projects, and have produced three (unpublished) novels.

I was a history major in college. It seems only logical that when I decided to try my hand at a novel, I decided to write an historical one. The Listener, took place in Missouri and Kansas in the 1920s and 30s. It was the story of a young woman, Hannah, and her growth to independence through devastating loss. It wasn’t very good.

The second novel, Capturing the Sky, told the story of Charles Michaels who struggled to choose between material success or a riskier future as an artist. Along the way, he worked to hold together a marriage and raise a daughter while he watches the world change from post-World War II to the restless 1960s. It was a better novel because I worked with two different professional editors who were wonderful and guided me. I learned a lot about writing, but mostly that novels probably weren’t what I was best at.

My third novel, Caws of Death, was very different. I read cozy mysteries for fun and decided to “try my hand” at writing one. I thoroughly enjoyed it creating it. It’s the story of Sophie Carlson, a retired bookseller. She becomes an amateur sleuth when one of her neighbors is murdered. Outraged, she decides that she can solve it before the police because she knows the neighborhood. Hilarity ensues.