"I am a nurse who's been spinning tales for years, especially when many of the people whose stories I tell are involved in the medical profession. Since dark nights on the front porch of the house where I lived and in the garage where my friends put on the plays I wrote, I've been a story-teller. That was my beginning and there were other steps along the way. Take third grade and my book report. I choose "Anna Karenina" and ended the book with these words; "She loved him so she threw herself under a train. There are a lot of things she could have done other than that dumb thing." After telling me I couldn't read that book, my teacher informed me I couldn't change the ending. My next experience with the world of critiquing came during my pursuit of a career as a nurse. I wrote a care study of a little boy I'd come to love. My instructor told me this was a scientific study and I should not have included emotional elements. After graduating, I married. My husband, a doctor, and I ended up in a small town where the Public Health service had a hospital. In the town was a small library. Within two months, I'd read every book and needed something to do. For Christmas, my husband bought me a typewriter and a ream of paper. Faced with a blank page, I began to write, badly at first. My first attempts were short stories, many published. Then I received a rejection that says this sounds like a synopsis of a novel. Once again, I learned. Three books and four children later, I returned to nursing to send those children to college. Once that was accomplished, I returned to exploring the world where I can change the ending, put in emotional elements and write the things I'd like to read."
