Writing has been a big part of my life ever since I wrote one-page, one-paragraph stories as a grade-schooler. I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since and can’t imagine life without words.
After I finished college and started working I edited, and wrote for, professional organization and company newsletters—activities that would continue my entire professional life.
I began my career as a retirement plan professional several years after college, and have loved every minute of it, earning the CEBS designation. I’ve been a 401(K) administrator, consultant, and conversion specialist. I then went to work for Sutter Health in Sacramento, California, where as an analyst and technical writer for 13 years I specialized in white papers and brochures, including Summary Plan Descriptions (SPDs), for the pension and retirement plans I supported in the Benefits Department.
I had dreams of being a published author when I was growing up, and that dream has come true. My article Loren Janes: A Stuntman’s Stuntman about legendary Hollywood stuntman Loren Janes was published in August 2014 on the Lone Pine, California, Film Festival website; Cultivating America’s Gardens was published in the July/August 2017 edition of the DAR’s American Spirit.
My next successes have been two feature articles in American History magazine: Andrew Jackson Downing’s story, American’s Original Designing Man in its December 2019 issue followed in April 2021 by the story of how Quakers started the American abolitionist movement in the 18th and 19th centuries, Fearless Radicals Turned the Quakers from Advocates of Slavery to Fervent Abolitionists.
And on a more personal note …
I may look like a perfect egghead on paper, with a background in medieval illuminated manuscripts and a specialty in corporate pensions, but in real life, my preferred means of relaxation is to watch reruns of the television show Law & Order. I am a long-time fan of the mystery and crime genre and have a keen appreciation for the twists and turns the Law & Order investigations and subsequent trials often take. Like the highly complex richly layered pictures in the manuscripts, so too are the layers of plot and evidence in Law & Order.
I’ve always had itchy feet, and those itchy feet have taken me on many adventures to interesting places – white water canoeing in rapids on the Guadalupe and Rio Grande Rivers in Texas, a mule ride to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, backpacking in Grand Teton National Park, and a cross country motor home trip, to name just a few. I attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where I earned a Master’s Degree in Medieval Art History. I was also awarded a graduate assistantship to Southern Methodist’s six-week-long summer program in Oxford, England, followed by four exhilarating weeks of research in England and France into twelfth-century manuscripts for my thesis.
I love sports, especially Dallas Cowboys football, and am an avid reader from art and history to mysteries and crime novels to science fiction.