I was born in Northern California, near San Francisco, and when I was ten years old my parents moved my family to a tiny lake town in central Wisconsin.  I remember standing on the side of the road in Nevada after the first day’s drive, thinking, “Huh.  So this is what it is to just go.”  Then, when I was eighteen, I took a bus one way across the country and went back to California, then Colorado, then Florida, then Cape Cod, Vermont, and more. Those journeys have deeply influenced my fiction writing, infusing my character’s hearts with a feeling of searching for something, a feeling that took up residence in my own heart at an early age. The imagery of landscapes is vivid for me as well: the Midwest, the West, and other places feel like characters to me in my work, the geography and cultures themselves full of emotion. I love to write with an ear for sensuality—mining the quests we all face in our emotional lives, our partnering, our healing from difficult things, our family lives, and love affairs. I’m interested in the adult balancing act of how we get our needs for closeness and meaning met, and then what we do with our pull toward desires, outside-the-lines sensual adventures, and blurry-lined exploration.     

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I wrote three nonfiction books: Naked Marriage, How to Be An Artist Without Losing Your Mind, Your Shirt or Your Creative Compass, and The Debt-Free Spending Plan all about learning simple adult life skills. When I wrote a play called Ruby and George in Love that got produced at Sonoma Arts Live Theatre Company, it was that play that drew me into fiction as a writer.  I couldn’t stop writing it, and the characters just kept talking to me. It's been like that ever since!  Now, my first short fiction collection, Stay with Me, Wisconsin will come out from Flying Ketchup’s new imprint Coyote Point Press, and I couldn’t be happier. Coyote Point Press will focus on the niche of contemporary short fiction--work that's provocative, brave and compelling.  So, I'm honored to be published!

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