I’ve been writing since I was 14. The memories of my childhood still deeply ingrained in my mind and heart. I grew up on a small creek just off the Chesapeake Bay in Pasadena, Maryland. My Dad moved us (my Mom, older sister, and younger brother – my younger sister born years later) from Baltimore to a more “appealing” place for kids to grow up. It meant a long commute to work for him, but for my Dad, it was worth the sacrifice. It was a magical place for us to grow up. A place with where we spent the summers swimming, boating, crabbing, and fishing. A place to ride our bikes and run around the yard catching lightning bugs at night. His love of the water took us there and it grew in my heart as well. 

In addition to my summers being filled with lots of water activities, my Mother’s influence brought me to a different love, that of books and reading. She took us to the local library every week to get books. I would lie in the hammock in our backyard, which was conveniently positioned under the shade of a big oak tree, and I would read for hours on end. The Nancy Drew Mystery series was my favorite and started my love of all things “mystery”. I would write my own stories, some coming from the “adventures” we would have at the point (what we called the peninsula we lived on). Searching for crabs at night after a summer rain, digging for sea glass, or just exploring the vacant land around us. I still have the book where I scrawled those first stories. My most treasured book.