I was born at home in rural Tennessee during a winter flood. The doctor didn't arrive in time so my Grandmother delivered me--my mother's fourth child, the first to survive. After a start like that it naturally follows that I would spend my time making up stories to try and top the drama of my birth!

So far, thirteen of those stories have been published as novels of mystery and dark suspense/ horror. Another is making the rounds in New York, uncounted because it's not sold. In addition, I've written and published more short stories, though probably not as many as I should have.

Those short stories launched my writing career back in the early seventies just after I moved to California with my husband and two kids. And in-between that flood in Tennessee and my move to California? Let's see--I grew up on a cotton farm in the bootheel of Missouri, became the first member of my huge extended family to finish high school, and left home for the big city two days after graduation with ten dollars and a bus ticket. I scooped ice cream at Howard Johnson's in Memphis, was a long-distance telephone operator for Southern Bell in Miami, did a short stint on active duty with the Marine Corps (surprise to those who thought they knew all about me!) and did office work for the Brain Research Foundation in Chicago. Then I got married and quickly became a suburban housewife with two kids and a stationwagon.

Sometime about then the writing bug bit, but I'm a person who is totally immersed in what she's doing, and what I was doing then was being a mom. So it wasn't until we moved to southern California in 1972 that I had the time to write--and then just the hours when my kids were in school. I began writing short stories and sold the first one I submitted to Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Not everything sold, of course, but enough to make me think I might actually have a career. One of those stories, Wolf Winter, a strange tale of a pioneer woman trapped in a snowbound Montana cabin with a wolf outside, appeared in SISTERS IN CRIME 4 and was nominated for both the Horror Writers of America's Bram Stoker Award and the Bouchercon's Anthony Award.

Another story was about a female private eye who worked in Orange County, California --yes that Orange County. Her name was Delilah West and the story appeared in AHMM in 1974, long before any of the current crop of female PIs were in print. When I began my first novel, I wanted to write about Delilah. That first book in the series, DEATH IS FOREVER, was begun much earlier but finally saw print in 1980. The fifth book, TRADE-OFF, is out in paperback from Worldwide Library; the sixth, DOWN FOR THE COUNT, is out in hardcover from St. Martin's Press.

In-between the Delilah West books, for various reasons, I wrote four titles published as horror. The last was DARK TIME, Berkley/Diamond, in 1992. There was even a romance in there under the pseudonym Marrissa Owens. There are two books in a suspense series for Berkley/Jove: SHADOW OF THE CHILD and ONLY IN THE ASHES. This series is set in Phoenix and features child psychologist Dr. Anne Menlo.

Saying no is hard to do, so I've been active in lots of organizations. Among them: Mystery Writers of America where I served on the SoCal Chapter's Board and as Chapter Treasurer; Sisters in Crime, serving as President of the Orange County Chapter during the formative months; Horror Writers of America where I was elected to national office as Treasurer in 1987-88 and then to the national Board of Directors. I'm also a member of the American Crime Writers League but have, so far, resisted volunteering for anything. Currently, I also am a member of the Creative Writing Advisory Board, California State University, Fullerton, University Extended Education, helping to set up a certified writer's program.

Return to Home Page ... Updated - Feb. 16, 1998