About

I’m a child of northeastern North Carolina, where the roads are flat and the dirt is rich and filled with cotton, corn and soybeans in the summer. Climb a magnolia, and it will take you into the sky and to the story of it. Claw your hand in the rich sandy soil, and you’ll never really clean it from beneath your nails.

I’m a (long ago) graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Journalism, and though I longed to be a writer, my first job out of college was as a photographer for a small daily newspaper 30 miles from home. I had taken exactly one course in photojournalism in college, and I’d made a “C”. When I told my professor what I was going to do, he laughed at me.

But I needed the measly paycheck, so I got an apartment, set up the darkroom in an old utility closet they put me in, and I set to work taking pictures. A year later I became an editor —they let me write a few stories along the way—but I knew I needed to find an actual writing job to be happy. So I moved to Augusta, Georgia, not knowing a soul, landing a feature writing job under an editor who actually taught me how to be a writer. I would leave that job with a husband in tow, Georgia cracker and reporter that he was.

It’s when I finally put down new roots as a wife and mother that I began to weave myself a story, using the gifts I’d been given—and the education my father paid for—to put the story out into the world.

As a young mother I began a freelance writing career that would take me down a path of constantly learning. I wrote for newspapers and magazines across the Southeast, including Elegant Bride and Southern Living. I wrote about everything from managing your married money, to the International Whistler’s Convention—don’t laugh, it’s a real and amazing event— and about a brand new basketball team called the Charlotte Hornets. Slowly I carved a career. Not sexy work, but writing.

I signed on to be a writer-in-residence in elementary schools in town through the United Arts Council, teaching students all over my county how not to write for the fourth grade writing test, and as my kids matriculated, I taught middle and high school essay writing as part of that wonderful program.

My ‘big break’ came when I wrote an essay about the life of our dog, the first gift my husband ever gave me, for the News & Observer. This was way before Marley and Me, that iconic memoir.

“Who wants to read about a dead dog?” my husband asked when I told him I was pitching it to the editor. Apparently everybody. I got snail mail pretty much every day for a while. That essay led to a regular gig, and I began to build my reader base, chronicling my daily life.

I wrote a Sunday feature about my father, a bona fide country doctor, who was retiring after more than 50 years of practicing medicine in my home town. He got letters from strangers every day for weeks after that one.

Then on a visit to Nags Head one spring break, I saw a magazine article about a tour of the historic homes called The Unpainted Aristocracy, and I contacted the tour director, an old beau from college. Might there be a story there?

That story, also in the News & Observer, followed one family’s story of a house that had weathered hurricanes and generations of lively folk and lived to tell it. Which led to my first hardcover book, Nags Headers, a linear and oral history of all the houses lining a mile of ocean along North Carolina’s storied Outer Banks.

I kept writing. Joined a writer’s group. Started two novels. Took writing classes. Entered a contest or two. Kept trying to hone my craft.

When the kids left for college, I became a professional “Church Lady”, working for my Episcopal Church on all things communications. I created a website, a magazine, took photographs and taught parishioners how to respond to the weekly lectionary in writing. Funny, isn’t it, how all the things I did in my career simmered into the delicious soup of being a church lady?

Six years ago, in the middle of my busy life, I got breast cancer. Then COVID hit, and I thought, well, time is running out. What dreams have I not realized? I had two unfinished novels ‘in the drawer’ as they say, so I took an online course to finish one of them.

Then two years ago, I retired from my church lady post and got serious about writing again.

Today I’m a hopeful novelist, editor, writing teacher, amateur photographer, grandmother, mom, sister, Episcopalian, friend, and cancer warrior. I am weaving all those pieces of me into an indelible tapestry, just like Carole King said. Come along. You might find yourself right here with me.