Please use the contact form below if you cannot find an answer to your question.
I have been writing professionally for over 50 years, including the writing that has allowed me to lead a comfortable middle class life: a career requiring significant expertise in the technical writing required for curriculum, assessment, and instructional design, and at the end of my career, creating the copy for a website used by Pennsylvania's schools for school improvement planning. During those same years and for the sheer joy of doing it, I have been writing novels, and when the spirit moves, sreenplay adaptations of those novels. As I near the end of my life, I am offering the final revisions of my novels for readers who enjoy and are inspired by character-driven works of Literary Fiction.
In the fifteen years prior to the turn of the Millennium, I approached the writing of novels and screenplays with the hope of making a living from that writing alone. I was aided in that effort by two important mentors: Peter Bart and Leslie Cox, my then partner's BFF who was Peter's wife, support that was lost when I divorced Leslie's BFF; nonetheless, I persevered. I focused on screenplays because Peter believed doing so would improve my story and character development (it did) and four screenplays were requested by studios to be read, but as you might suspect, were never optioned.
I also enrolled in the Creative Writing Master's Program at West Chester University, but near the turn of the Millennium with only three courses needed to complete the program and having turned fifty, I reached an inflection point in my life: move to Hollywood as a barista at Starbucks with hard copies of my screenplays behind the counter with the hope of discovery, or pursue my career in education.
I did choose the latter but I never stopped writing. And while I still dabble at screenwriting from time to time, I have spent the past twenty-five years doing what I love best: crafting literary fiction. It is only now that I am able and willing to share with satisfaction and pride some of the many titles I have self-published over the years but never seriously marketed because I am a writer and not a marketeer. I do not plan to take advantage of the many marketing strategies available for independently published authors, but will be sharing my website and hard copies of my work when the spirit and opportunity move me to do so.
If you have read this far, I hope you will consider giving my work a read. And if you enjoy the literary fiction written during the first half of the last century, which would make you a member of a small minority of people buying novels today, I am confident you will enjoy reading mine.
I am inspired by the characters that bubble up from my subconscious. I lose myself in imagining the lives that appear, and in due time, I begin to imagine plot lines and settings and begin to write. Like most writers of literary fiction, there is much that is seemingly magical and deeply and strangely psychological in what I experience during the writing process, but when I begin to put words "to paper" via my laptop, I relish both the art and technicality of writing. The most enjoyable part of my process comes after a novel has been completed. It is then that I explore the magic that can come from changing the genders and/or sexual preferences of characters until I arrive at characters with whom I feel deep empathy. That arrival creates novels that do feel truly magical to me, and I hope to readers willing to dive into them!
An important component of my approach to writing is to constantly reread my own work. In what is becoming my favorite book about books, Jane Austen's Bookshelf, its author, Rebecca Romney, has written the following which perfectly encapsulates why I reread my own novels (in addition to having yet another opportunity to find missed errors!) ... On the one hand, we come back to certain books because we want to experience, again, the feelings they first sparked. But books inevitably change with us. We notice new aspects of old favorites because our lives are different. Books are not static things. I've said that one reason I love reading is that I can examine the emotions it stirs safely from a distance, at my own pace. When I'm rereading, I'm doing that, and more. I'm remembering the emotions of the last read. I am remembering my past self. Simultaneously, I'm noticing the emotions of this read. I am marking the outlines of my current self. In that way, reading is not a separate act from the rest of my life. It is central to it.
For centuries, writers have created pen names to publish their literary works. Adopting a pseudonym grants writers the ability to conceal their true identity for personal, political, and ethical reasons. Some of our literary world’s most beloved, bestselling authors have formulated their entire careers using alternative identities. Female writers, especially during the 18th and 19th century, have used male pen names for the reasons already alluded to, but also to combat sexism and prejudice in a traditionally male-dominated craft. Other reasons for using a nom de plume include include privacy, avoiding overexposure, crossing into different genres, creating a sense of individuality, and even simplifying one’s birth name in hopes of making it more memorable. Whatever the case may be, choosing a pen name remains a personal choice that ultimately aids writers in their publishing pursuits. (21 Famous Authors and Their Pen Names)
In this day and age, some male novelists may have chosen to use an androgenous or overtly female pen name due to the fact that writing novels today is not only a female-dominated craft; readership of fiction is predominantly female. In 2022, 46.9% of all women read novels or short stories, compared to 27.7% of all men: The Men-Women Spilt in Reading is Real--and Persists Amid Historical Rate Declines.
Using a pen name is not an attempt to influence sales of my novels, nor for me is writing about gaining fame or fortune. Writing is simply a way for me to express myself, an opportunity to let writing serve as my drug of choice to escape the current monarchial lunacy of America, and to avoid the intrusive trappings of even the imagined possibility of fame. I have lived long enough to experience the flickering spotlight that shines on upper level public educators, and neither my ego nor my income requires more of the modest fame, which I once endured as a consequence of that chosen vocation.
I write when the spirit moves (which is often), share my writing with whomever I wish to share it, and enjoy using a marketing app to occasionally introduce a few dozen readers to my work. I also am unabashedly WOKE and find my allegiance lies with the needs, wants, wishes, and inalienable human rights of women of all races and creeds, which is in direct opposition to the current majority of American males who are apparently eager to codify and immortalize Toxic Masculinity as the governing dogma of America. It is my repugnance of the toxic words and actions of a majority of American men and my allegiance to women and their pursuit of empowerment, which has caused me to choose my pen name as a symbol of my allegiance and as an homage to a Dickensian heroine who manages to survive and ultimately thrive despite the oppressive power of men in 19th Century Britain.
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.