Biography


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Reading "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" with Bonnie, Ma, and Cathy.


Me with pal Michael Kamtman. He also played Nathan to my Adelaide in Guys and Dolls.

David celebrating Halloween with Little Edvard.

Celebrating Odyssey graduation with my roommate Laurie Lanzdorf.

I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, the youngest of three daughters. My mom was a housewife and my dad worked for the DuPont Company. He was also a skilled woodworker and gardener. He taught me to fly fish and instilled in me a love of birds and wildlife, although he hated grackles and shot them with his BB gun. Also the occasional squirrel.

My first story was “Cherokee the Wild Pinto,” which I typed on my Tom Thumb typewriter. I was nine. This was followed by such works as the Revolutionary War romance Three’s a Crowd and my unfinished World War II epic Claudine. (I cast this as a movie starring Tippi Hedren and also wrote the trailer. Even then, I had control issues.) I wrote my first fan fiction based on the TV show "Garrison's Gorillas." The story showed an early (if unwitting) grasp of fantasy as I set it in France several years before D-Day, had Lieutenant Garrison waving to members of the French Resistance to show he was a friend, and specified that the Nazis spoke "German-accented English." (Well, they did on the show.)

After this outpouring of creative writing, I turned to acting and pursued it throughout high school and college.

After graduating from Bucknell University, I spent two fairly miserable years in educational administration (first as an admissions counselor and later as Assistant to the Dean of Students at a private school). Then I decided to follow my dream and become an actor.

Da was not pleased.

I met my future husband David Lofink while performing opposite him in the comedy Bedroom Farce. While still acting, I began writing children’s musicals. When I got fired from my job, I also performed in them, turning in a performance as The Yellow Bunny that rivaled some of my lesser-known college roles as a hermaphrodite and a maple tree.

I was accepted into the Lehman Engel-BMI Musical Theatre Workshop in New York City where I met Gary Schocker, with whom I wrote several songs, a cantata, and two full-length musicals. During this time, I worked as a retail store clerk, an accounts receivable manager, a merchandising director, and a temp, eventually landing in the not-for-profit world where I became a grant writer and publications consultant.

I wrote my first novel after I had a dream (no, really) while visiting the Jersey Shore. Publishers turned it down; they didn't know how to market it. Was it a fantasy? A romance?

I was floundering through the opening chapters of the as-yet-unnamed Heartwood when I discovered the Odyssey Writers Workshop. I brought the novel with me to New Hampshire, convinced I'd return home with most of my work completed. My Odyssey relates the process I underwent as I learned otherwise. 

Suffice it to say, I left New Hampshire with a lot of paper to recycle. After I finished the first draft (a mere 180,000 words) I rethought, revised and rewrote. In March of 2004, I got the word that DAW Books wanted to buy it.

So that's me in not-so-brief. Visit my other self to learn about my other novels.

 

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