For the past seven years, my writing focus has been on finishing several books. My first book was published a decade ago, but life took my writing in other directions before and after working on that first novel.

When I was in the tenth grade, I saw an advertisement in our local newspaper for neighborhood news reporters, so I applied. After what felt like a successful interview, I got the job writing a weekly column covering events that took place in my neighborhood. It was fun interviewing people associated with different events, employees at local businesses, and members of the community about issues in our neighborhood. This would be my first paying writing job.

Before I wrote my first novel, and while I was working at my performing arts studio, I also worked for an online company writing weekly articles. This company hired freelancers to manage one of the many topics offered on the website, and my topic was musical theatre. I have a collection of about thirty articles featuring performer’s bios, Tony Awards recaps, audition tips, and numerous other topics from my days working for the site. It was disappointing when the company shut down the website, but I was thankful for the great experience.

Interestingly enough, an editor from Writer’s Digest books read one of my articles on playwriting online and offered to publish it in their Screenwriter’s and Playwright’s Market books. They also reprinted it again in the following year’s new edition of the book.

Many of you probably don’t know this, but I co-owned a performing arts studio for twenty-three years. We offered classes in a wide variety of dance disciplines, music lessons (voice & piano), and drama and musical theatre. Besides teaching music classes and private lessons in our triple threat studio, I also wrote original plays and musicals for our drama department; sometimes as many as eight new scripts every school year.

As a writer, I followed my imagination, creating worlds and characters that challenged the students, helped them grow in their theatre skills, and entertained audiences of all ages. For me, playwriting wasn’t that different from writing short stories and novels. Create interesting characters, drop them into unique worlds and incredible circumstances, and tell their stories. But in plays, dialogue was the narrative.

Some of my favorite scripts from those twenty-three years included a full length pirate musical, The Curse of Captain Alvida Black, A melodrama, Golden Opportunity, a murder/mystery, The Mystery of Scotsdale Manor, and numerous one acts including, The Curse of the Orpheum Theatre, Family Feud, Hillbilly Survivor, All Hands on Deck, and Journey to Planet Pop. One of my scripts, The Wizard’s Trick, was even purchased by a children’s theatre in Pittsburg to be used for their musical theatre summer camp.

Because we were a triple threat studio and many of our drama classes were musicals, I also wrote original songs for most of the plays, which included creating not only the music, but also the lyrics. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than when the students would ask if we could rehearse the songs one more time because they had so much fun singing them.

Working with students of all ages, including lots and lots of children, led me to join an online writing group called The Rhyming Critters. There were about a dozen members at our peak and everyone wrote rhymes of some kind or another.Over the years, I scripted a couple of picture book texts, a play that was all in rhyme, and numerous poems that were published in some of the most popular kids’ magazines.

I entered a contest where those writers chosen would be included in an anthology called, Dear Mom: I’ve Always Wanted You to Know. I was thrilled to have my essay, Big Shoes to Fill, join those of the many other talented women. That book still sits on my shelf to this day.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, as I looked for jobs I could do from the safety of my home, I began to apply to ghostwriting positions. In the last 4 years, I have ghostwritten a teen Christian book, a horror novel, a summer beach romance and a cozy mystery, all to glowing reviews from the clients who hired me. I also fulfilled contracts where I edited everything from rhyming kidlit to website pages to a memoir. I even wrote some articles for online websites and did movie summaries.

Although I still dabble in ghostwriting and editing now and again, I have let the rhyming children’s pieces go for now, I’ve semi-retired and no longer run a performing arts studio, and instead now focus on novels in my favorite genre: suspense/thrillers.

And I’ve resurrected my blog of many years after only posting once or twice a year.

Once a writer – always a writer!