Born and raised in rural Virginia, momma taught me the recipes for buttermilk biscuits, cracklin’ corn bread, sweet sun tea, and a fulfilling life. Since momma stressed the latter as the most important, I’ll share. She said a fulfilling life…the only kind worth living…is a measure of two cups hard work and one cup pleasure with a healthy dousing of love, gratitude, discernment, integrity, and spirituality. She told me that such a life would fill my heart with joy and my mind with wisdom and see me through the inevitable times of sorrow and trouble. No surprise…momma was right…although I’m still working on some of that!

Back then, my cup of pleasure was often filled with my love for fishing, crabbing, clamming, and long sunset walks on the coast of the Eastern shore. Stitched a southern gal, my heart is also quilted with Native American, Scottish, and Irish patches that I wear with immersive ancestral pride.  

Currently, I reside in the foothills of Virginia with my husband, John, and our two rightfully spoiled rescue kitties. Nowadays, my cup of pleasure is generally filled with gardening, reading, writing, and mastering the art of brick oven cooking. I still visit the shore, delighting in the feeling of wet sand beneath my bare feet, the warmth of the sun on my face, and the mist of cool, salty kisses that spritz my cheeks when the waves crash playfully against the boulders that hang out like groups of cool kids along the shoreline. The ocean calls to me and the selkie within is awakened. I expect to fully return one day.

As a university professor, I have enjoyed a writing career in the truth market. My focus now is on creating works of fiction grounded in truth. Truth that moves and inspires. Truth that reveals the best and the worst of humanity and everything in between. After all, like Stephen King said, “good fiction is the truth inside the lie.”