I was born in Kentucky and raised in Tennessee. My parents died when I was two, so my brother and I went to live with my grandparents. Looking back, I see that we were poor, but like so many people have written before me, I had no idea we were poor.
I’ve always loved to read and reading proved to be my entertainment when I was sick, which was often. My brother has said it’s a wonder I’m alive because we burned coal for heat and I had asthma. Then came television, but that’s another story.
The first book I remember from the school library was This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart. Before that I read fairy tales, Little Golden Books, and cereal boxes. Any book was my escape, and I believed just about everything I read, including the fairy tales. I loved happy endings. My father (I am told) had a very sunny disposition and I credit his DNA (and the good Lord) for my upbeat attitude.
This is not to say we had no hard times. I remember, . . . but that can wait. I can’t remember the first fiction I wrote, but the first essay I wrote for the local Jaycees won me a partial scholarship to college. I still have it, somewhere in amongst the yellowed manuscript pages.
I married before finishing college. My husband was a writer and teacher. He encouraged me so, I wrote True Stories and True Confessions—none of which were true. I got a check but no byline. My husband was writing about country music and when he was overwhelmed with a real job, I began doing interviews and writing columns.
Somewhere in that time I had four daughters and went back to finish my last year of college. I also was a rural mail carrier and substitute teacher.
We moved to Nashville and I continued freelance writing before working for a weekly newspaper.
Life happened and I divorced and moved to Texas where I worked as a proofreader and then as media director for the state senate. If I had not had the credentials of a writer, I would never have had the chance to be media director.
I kept writing during those years, manuscripts and a few short stories. I won two Pike’s Peak short story contests in 2010 and 2011.
In Texas, I experienced the worst heat and drought I had ever known. I still think farmers are some of the best, hardest working people on the planet. As lack of water grew to a crisis point I studied the issue. It’s not just a Texas problem, so I wrote a book.
A Promise of Water is available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon.
Besides reading, I’ve always loved cowboys and cowgirls. The cowboy I wrote about in Promise was a Texas Ranger, Oswald Nightingale. But I have a cowgirl in mind, Casey Blackwood, for another book. Stay tuned.