Author

I caught the writing bug early in my teens. My best friend was headed to Europe with her family over the summer so I wrote her a fantastic tale to read on the 13-hour plane ride. It was full of love and adventure and turned out to be nothing like the reality of actually being there. She paid me with Nutella - a hazelnutty bit of heaven that her Oma always served when she visited her in West Germany. This was in the 80’s, when it was still West Germany, and no one in the U.S. had even heard of Nutella. I know! I thought it was just about the best thing I had ever tasted. And that meant my writing was worth something of value.

Back then I toyed with the notion of becoming a writer, but decided it was too risky - I’m a double Virgo after all, ever Miss Practicality. So, for years, writing was relegated to just a hobby of mine.

I started earning real money for my efforts when I worked my way through grad school freelancing for several article mills. These are middle-men type companies where they give you a subject, you write an article and they sell it to a website. Ever checked out Expedia or Travelocity for a hot travel destination? A how-to article on Australian Ebay?

That was me.

Not having a byline was dejecting, but writing those anonymous articles taught me something. My writing was good enough.

I was getting paid in more than Nutella. And people were reading my words!

Never having studied writing professionally, I always thought that I shouldn’t write “for real” because I wasn’t trained. But the funny thing was, my credentials didn’t matter because the people reading those articles didn’t even know who I was.

I learned that letters after my name don’t equal knowledge or worthiness. This is something I still struggle with every day. Have you actually looked at the string of letters after my name? Or all of the trainings I continually take?

So now I have about 3 unfinished pieces of non-fiction and 2 fictional sagas that I have in the works. Someday there will be time to finish them. Until then, I continue to write articles for my blog, though I am working on consistency. Below are some places you can read my works, even if you’re not an Australian looking for instructions to build a hobbit door.