I was raised on a farm near a tiny spec of a town called Pembroke in Southwestern Kentucky where the scenery is as green and postcard-perfect as you can possibly imagine. During the summer, I’d drive around the acre lot we called a yard on the red tractor lawnmower imagining the person I one day hoped to be. I imagined a life outside of the little bubble of a universe I’d grown up in and after graduating from Western Kentucky University, I had my shot.
Officially, the story I usually tell is that I hung a map on the wall, threw a dart and it landed in the great state of Oregon where I eventually found a job and moved. That is the sugar-coated reason. My real motive in pursuing an Oregon move was because of a boy I loved beyond all reason. He’d moved back to Eugene to live with his brother and being desperate to see him again, I set up some interviews in the area over spring break my senior year because I knew my parents would never approve of me flying out there to solely rekindle our spark. Turns out the boy was cheating on me. But I landed the job. And after weighing the possibilities, I decided to overlook the heartbreak and grab hold of the adventure.
I moved to Oregon without knowing a soul. Then soon after, I met another smooth talking, handsome boy and I thought we just might be able to make a life together. After some bumbling around, I finally found a job I loved in Portland. Now that is one amazing city! I used to walk around downtown on my lunch hour with a practical black umbrella looming over my head and a crushing passion for the city’s essence in my heart. I married the handsome guy and one day, his entire family made the decision we were all going to move to Phoenix, Arizona where there the ratio of sunny to gray days is nearly always reversed. They drug me down to Arizona kicking and screaming. Two years later, every single one of them moved back to Oregon, including my husband and left me by myself in a city I hardly knew. It was time for another adventure.
Phoenix is a lot like the surrounding desert, difficult to establish roots but hard to pull them up once they’re there. After my divorce, everything was shiny and new again. I changed careers. I met and married a Georgia boy. Then after years of banging my head against a corporate brick wall, I gave up and quit my job without a plan. It allowed me focus more on helping homeless animals and I began to write, something I hadn’t done with tenacity and concentration for many, many years. I always said I wanted to write a book. So I did. And then I wrote some more. Thus begins a new adventure in my life.
My short stories, “The Secrets We Keep” and “Anger Moves” have both been featured in CC&D Magazine. My short story “Fulfilled” was featured in the web anthology, “In Her Place: Stories about Women Who Get Around.” My first novel, Her Blind Ambition was released in the summer of 2011. I’m currently working on a second novel tentatively scheduled for release in December 2012.