Welcome!

What an exciting and joyous time – preparing for the birth of my first book of fiction.  I hope you have enjoyed some of the short stories on the site.  I plan to add a short story every few weeks to the site, so visit often to see what is new.  My goal is to leave you with a smile.

I thought I would share how I got started with fiction writing. It all started with having two children and then each of them having children.  I wanted my kids to be unfettered by the worlds “shoulds” for their imagination.  (How they behaved is another matter, but we won’t talk about that here!) Most nights we would have a story that would start with me asking what the story would be about.  They would pick a topic and I would start.  Every so often I would stop and ask what would happen next and then I would incorporate that into the story.  Since they both had strong imaginations, the stories were sometimes quite fantastical. Sometimes it was challenging to incorporate their ideas.  It was great training for writing fun stories.

The next influence was basically my own rebellion.  So many stories and movies depend on sex and violence, and sometimes both together, and sometimes REALLY dark.  That is not how I want to entertain myself.  I want some fun.  And I want to smile.  And I want to meet neat people who aren’t afraid to be a little different – like maybe they aren’t even people, maybe they are a hamster.

Friends have asked me where I get my ideas.  It is a bit scary to admit that the ideas often come easily.  I am not sure it is a good thing that ideas like talking hamsters looking for Cheshire cat’s smile or a person having a baby changing into a Clydesdale horse come easily to me.  (These are from two short stories.) Maybe not everyone creates a house and a forest that communicates with the family that lives there and they are all pretty happy about the situation.  (That is from my book that is about to be birthed)  But it is fun!   And I do smile!  I am often at my happiest when I am writing or editing.  I smile a lot!  Just to assure you, I do know that I am often writing in a fantasy world. I do know it is not real.  You do not need to worry about my sanity!

I hope you will enjoy getting to know some of my characters and I wish you many smiles!

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As a physical therapist and a physical therapy educator I was a writer of all things professional (memos, reports, articles, chapters, tests) for over 30 years.

As a retired person I am now a writer of the fun things (novels, short stories, family stories).

My life is rich.  I have been a daughter, a student, a wife, a professional woman, a mom, a grandmother, and am now learning to be me.

My goal is to write pieces:

• To engage, amuse, enthrall, and unite us
• To make us smile and to make us wonder
• To have fun – me as writer and you as reader.