Writer. Nurse. Pilot. Storyteller.

As a native of the Rocky Mountain west, I am still a little baffled at having landed near Louisville, Kentucky, where we’ve lived nearly half of my lifetime. (Husband’s job, if you wondered how that happened!) Our roots are now firmly fixed both here, with family, grandkids, and friends, and there, with siblings and extended family.

My childhood on a cattle ranch meant that I spent most of my time outside and learned to observe nature, and the nature of life. A voracious reader, I exhausted the nearby town’s Carnegie Library’s children’s section in fifth grade, and was granted the privilege of checking out books from the adult section. My mother learned that the State library would send a box of books unavailable locally every month; I still remember the thrill of opening those magical packages! She also subscribed to Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, and we’d quibble over custody of the new book each quarter, until we’d both managed to absorb its contents.

A pivotal moment came when a neighboring rancher took my Dad for a ride in his Cessna-172, a small, four-seat airplane. As an afterthought, he invited my younger brother and me along. The flight was less than fifteen minutes, and we never got more than 500 feet above the ground, but that was all it took. I was hooked. From then on, I wanted to fly.

We moved to town, where several teachers recognized something I didn’t, and encouraged me to write: essays, poetry, short stories. My first rejection was from the New Yorker magazine (a poem). I was sixteen years old.

My Dad wouldn’t let me take flying lessons until I could drive our manual transmission car—from a full stop at the top of a hill on a snow-packed, icy road, across (busy!) Main Street. Took me a while to master that. Then it was time for college, and no money would go for flying lessons with that expense looming.

In the Seventies, the career options for young women boiled down to six. Without college: secretary, hairdresser, waitress. With college: teacher, nurse, social worker. Given that I have zero aptitude for the non-college options, and I had the grace of being able to go to college, I chose nursing, as it seemed more adventurous than teaching or social work. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I did become a Registered Nurse and worked in many fascinating subspecialties. But the best part of graduating and getting a job was that I could afford flying lessons on my own.

Which I did. Private pilot, commercial pilot, instructor (flight and ground), instrument rated (fly in the clouds), single- and multi-engine. Met a pilot at the airport and married him. Worked as a nurse and a flight and/or ground instructor for the next number of decades while raising our kids.

Before traffic-cams, I was one of a cadre of flight instructors who flew traffic reporters around Louisville mornings and evenings. Fun, because we flight instructors got to actually fly the airplane, and boring, because it was mostly giant circles around the interstate loops. That was where the seed of Hijacked was planted.

I bought a used laptop, taught myself how to use it, and began writing.

For what it’s worth, Hijacked got revised about twenty times. I learned as I went, and had to repeatedly go back and apply the latest lesson to the whole manuscript. I had to learn who I was as a writer, and eventually, my voice emerged.

I joined writing groups—Louisville Romance Writers (now Kentuckiana Romance Writers); Romance Writers of America®; Catholic Writers Guild; Women’s Fiction Writers Association. I took classes, went to conferences, and took some time away to get a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing (emphasis: Creative Nonfiction) from Spalding University.

Along the way, I sort of fell into writing freelance articles for The Criterion, the Archdiocese of Indianapolis’s award-winning weekly newspaper. I have been so blessed to witness and write about the amazing things ordinary people do as they live out their faith in Christ. Through connections at Catholic Writers Guild, I began writing Daily Gospel Reflections for CatholicMom.com; I hope readers get as much from those as I do when I write them!

These days, I sing in my parish choir and in a nearby Spanish-speaking parish choir; meet, pray, and share weekly with a small group of Catholic women; take care of my formerly feral cat (yes, there’s a story there!); and spend time with family and grandkids. My husband and I travel when we can, and create new memories even as we cherish the old ones.

And I keep writing. ♥