Like many writers, I have always loved books. The happiest hours of my childhood were spent with my nose burrowed deep in a book and my mind far away in another place or time. My mother never allowed me to babysit. She believed the house could burn down around me and I would be too absorbed in a book to notice. I knew early on that writing could be a career, and a fun one at that. My late aunt Janet Louise Roberts (who also wrote as Louisa Bronte, Rebecca Danton, and Janette Radcliffe) reveled in her career as a romance novelist. Inspired by her, I started writing stories in elementary school. Sadly, these early stories revealed no natural talent for plotting or story structure; the animal hero, after a series of unconnected adventures, often came to a unfortunate end such as being devoured by the villain.

Fast forward many years. I left Beavercreek, Ohio, to attend the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. From there I went to Evanston, Illinois, to earn master’s and doctorate degrees in anthropology, finishing just as Ronald Reagan’s efforts to undermine the American university system were having their most severe effects. With universities starved for money and faculty positions scarce, I needed another career. Because I had just written a dissertation, editing, writing, or research seemed logical choices. By this time, I was married and living in Iowa, which offered few such jobs. We moved to Washington, D.C., where I worked first at Science magazine as editor of its Guide to Scientific Instruments and writer of its “New Products” column and later at The Journal of NIH Research as a half-time production person, half-time writer focusing on biotech instrumentation and techniques.

Health problems forced me to leave the traditional working world. I became a freelance science and medical writer and copyeditor, which I have been ever since. I love nearly everything about being a freelancer—the solitude, the control over my schedule, the chorus of birds outside my office windows, the fully stocked refrigerator and pantry a short walk away, and the freedom to turn down boring assignments. Over the years, I have won several awards for medical writing. When my husband took a job in New Orleans, I brought my career along. We lived in that beautiful, magical city from 1991 to 2007, except for three months spent in Texas as refugees after Hurricane Katrina. We now live in Southern California.

Through all those years, I still dreamed of writing fiction. But that dream took a back seat to my busy job and other activities. Many authors are driven to write. I instead am driven to create. I knew from Aunt Janet’s experience that I could expect to put in years of hard work before I produced my first salable book. How much easier it was to play music or design a quilt than to start such a monumental project! Then in 2000, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and died six months later. Before that, it seemed I had plenty of time to pursue dreams. But when my mother died at age 70, despite haven taken far better care of her health than most people, I felt I had no time to waste. The time had come to stop dreaming and start writing.

I joined both the Romance Writers of America (RWA) and its local New Orleans chapter (SOLA), began squeezing in time between magazine articles to write short stories, and joined a critique group. Since then, I've published several short stories. (See the “Short Stories” section of my Web site.) In October 2009, my first novel, Like Mayflies in a Stream, was published by Hadley Rille Books. My goal is to continue writing and improving my craft. To that end, I attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop in 2009. I hope to eventually make at least half of my living from fiction.