There was never a time when I wasn’t a writer. My favorite childhood activity was going to the library to check out books. I wrote and read every day–at restaurants, as a passenger in the car, and while my parents shopped at stores. I’ve always been an introvert so it was common for me to disappear at family gatherings to write. With my friends, I created a group called The Writers Club to write short stories and critique each other’s work.

1980

In high school, I was editor of my school’s literary magazine and had articles published in the local newspaper–but I wanted to touch lives through books as they had for me, so I was devastated to learn being a novelist wasn’t a “real job.” I put my passion on hold when I went to Iowa State University, majored in journalism and mass communication, and enjoyed co-hosting a talk show on the campus TV station. English was my minor so I wrote for my college magazine and had several articles published in a newspaper where I interned for two summers.

1998

After graduation, I worked in both television and radio for the next few years. In 2003, I married my college sweetheart and we moved to Omaha, had a son in 2008, and a daughter in 2011.

My life-long ambition to be an author never wavered, though. I joined the Romance Writers of America in 2005 and submitted my first manuscript in 2006, followed by another in 2007. When publication fell through, I took a hiatus to be a stay-at-home-mom. My RWA membership expired in 2009, but I re-joined in 2013 after my oldest child started kindergarten (we’d moved back to our homestate of Iowa in 2011). Every November, writers are encouraged to join NaNoWriMo (write 50,000 words in one month). I’d never participated but decided to try. Although it wasn’t a romance, an inspirational story came to me in a dream (about a missing child, mental illness, adoption, and marriage during grief) so I immediately got to work. It was literally a “dream come true” when I was offered a contract in December 2013 for The 20th Christmas. The novel was released at Barnes & Noble on October 1, 2014, and on November 6th I was ranked an Amazon Best Selling Author when The 20th Christmas reached a #3 spot. On Black Friday it reached the Top 10 list again (#8 for Christian Fiction) and a third & fourth time in December 2014.

In 2015, I signed a contract for my second inspirational novel, Caged Dove, about a woman who was bullied as a young girl and returns to her hometown after being gone for fifteen years. After getting divorced, she’s stranded with her high school crush. A dramatic chain of events weave her life with a teenager contemplating suicide. I spoke on a national radio talk show about my personal experience with bullying, and was featured in print and online articles.

2018

Although I left the Romance Writers of America in 2018, I joined Women’s Fiction Writers Association in 2020, was a member of Sisters In Crime for 4 years, and in 2021 finally had a romance novel released by a mainstream publisher, titled Frozen Rose.

Like many people, the pandemic caused me to re-evaluate my path and the direction that I wanted to take now. I felt pulled to share other people’s stories again so my resume since then has included “Genealogist” after I received my certification to write family history biographies, “Magazine Content Director” of a community magazine in Oregon & California, and now I will be a “Client Care Specialist” for a body coherence practitioner at Create Alignment.

I am so grateful that in ALL of my jobs I’ve been able to share positive messages with the world. My consistent theme will always be hope. I believe when we live with hope then our own life stories will have a happy ending.

2020