Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
l grew up in America’s heartland, the midwestern United States, earning a Bachelors of Arts in Religious Studies then moving to the southern United States for my Masters in Human Resources. The midwestern United States has good, old fashioned values, family means everything and the food is fresh. People were open and honest with their emotions, so there were a lot of raw emotions for a young writer-in-training to absorb, which comes in handy with my Novels. You can see that in alot of the characters from "The Rose Petal Wine Murder Mysteries".
Fresh foods were always available at Mom's table growing up, so that certainly influenced my cooking, in addition to health issues as an adult, that forced me to learn how to shop, cook and prepare fresh, natural foods, as close to natural and whole as possible. Mom was always shopping for fresh vegetables, such as carrots, onions, celery, bell peppers, and potatoes. Lord love a duck, she certainly loved her potatoes and gravy! At almost every meal and twice on Sundays. So Mom and her cooking are never far behind in my cookbook series "Simple, Healthy, Fresh", as you read in the forwards.
I moved around a lot after high school, living in, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas for some time before settling in the Pacific Northwestern coast, in the Emerald City, Seattle. I was able to experience alot more out of life than I would have, staying in the same small home town I grew up in.
When did you first start writing?
During English classes as an Undergraduate, I can remember writing for assignments, enjoying peppering the papers, essays and research papers with descriptions, people, places, emotions and so forth. I enjoyed the process very much, but unfortunately, none of my English teachers did. They consistently marked me off for my writing, stating to 'cut the prose' and 'don't be so descriptive'. Afterwards, I never wrote again, never getting encouragement from anywhere.
It wasn't until after my kidney transplant in 2003 that my then husband encouraged me to start my first Novel, Aside of Murder. I had always had ideas tucked in the back of my mind for the first few books in the series, but never had the courage or push to actually set the ideas down in written form. That first Novel took me two years to write, but I had the idea rolling around in my mind for over twenty!
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