Austin SCBWI

As a child on my family’s quarter horse ranch, my first best friends were animals. My chores involved caring for dogs, cats, horses, cows, chickens, turkeys, guinea hens, ducks, geese, and a pet skunk named Stinky. I was as much a part of the outdoors as the wind.

The wide open spaces of home proved the perfect garden to harvest my imagination. When not training or showing horses, I was most often perched on the outstretched limb of a big oak tree with a notebook and pen in hand. There, I poured short stories, plays, poetry, love letters, and dreams onto paper. I never dared show my words to anybody.

I believed I could grow up to be everything I wanted to be; an author, an actress, a veterinarian, a model, a screenwriter, an inventor, and a philanthropist. I was pretty sure that none of those professions involved chores, and that their allowance was more than 25 cents per week.

My father called me Princess, which convinced me that my family was keeping my royal lineage a secret for my own safety. I wondered… were these people my real parents? Surely, one day, my true royal birthright would be revealed to me. But, by the time I became an oh-so-dramatic teenager, I was stripped of my Princess title and thrust into the reality of adulthood. Bummer!

The child in me is still very much alive which explains my love of children’s literature. I have freelanced for newspapers and newsletters and have had four Victorian plays produced locally, but my heart is in writing for kids.

My child-lit works have been published in a short story anthology, Mistletoe Madness, as well as magazines such as Cricket, Odyssey, and Kid Zone. Currently, I am revising two nonfiction picture books, researching a third nonfiction picture book, revising a fiction picture book, and outlining my first novel.

I am a proud alum of The Institute of Children’s Literature,
Highlights Writers Workshop at Chautauqua, and the first Highlights Founders’ workshop focused on narrative nonfiction, as well as numerous workshops and classes focused on creative writing.

I am delighted to be an active member of the Austin SCBWI and currently serve as Special Projects Coordinator.

I am a writer who would be content to write simply because I love the choreography of words on the page and the tango that appears between characters, real or imagined. But, as an author, I aspire to share the world with kids through my words.

Above my desk is a quote borrowed from Benjamin Franklin. “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth the reading, or do things worth the writing.”