My mother always said I was born with a book in my hand. Little did she know it was a notebook and I had a pencil tucked between its pages.

 

While most little girls were playing with dolls or dressing up in their mother’s clothes, I was devouring Trixie Belden mysteries and imagining myself as one of her crime-solving friends. By the time I closed the cover on my last adventure with the girl detective, my fate was sealed. I had seen my destiny and in it I was a successful mystery novelist.

Knowing a No. 2 pencil could get me only so far, I begged my mother for a typewriter. When that sunflower yellow Brother with shiny black keys appeared under the Christmas tree, I started writing and never looked back.

 

Upon graduating college with a degree in journalism, I landed my first newspaper job in Illinois Amish country. When I wasn’t whipping my AMC Gremlin around horses and buggies on my way to cover barn fires and quilting bees, I was writing more articles about broom corn than I would have ever imagined possible. While among the Amish, I learned to love thick slices of hot, homemade bread slathered with hand-churned butter and apple butter so fresh it sassed back when I bit into it.

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As happy as I was with my little bucolic life, the promise of an exciting career in daily journalism lured me to Georgia where I learned that summer starts in April, y’all is the only proper noun needed, and macaroni & cheese is a vegetable.

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One Sunday while I was sitting in church waiting for the service to start, the love of my life walked into the sanctuary. There was only one problem – a pretty, long-legged blonde was on his heels. I soon learned, much to my relief, that the young beauty was his daughter, and life started looking up.

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Today, when I'm not writing mysteries, I work for a college in Georgia writing fundraising materials and articles for its alumni magazine.