I am quite inept at writing about my life--it's been a very nice one so far, but in the repeating it may sound a bit tedious. So I will hit the highlights and offer you a very speedy read.

I was born in Manitowoc, Wisc, a small city on the shores of Lake Michigan where my father was a shipbuilder. We spent summers baking on Lake Michigan (before the days of sun alerts) and enjoyed the perks that growing up in a small town provides. I went to high school in Green Bay, Wisc, a boarder in an all-girls academy, just like my sister, mother and her seven sisters before her had done.

College was Fontbonne in St. Louis, and graduate school (philosophy) was Indiana U in Bloomington where I met my husband. In between all of that I was a Catholic nun for several years. A checkered past, to be sure.

Writing...
has always been a part of my life, from fictionalizing my diary when I was a teen to working in public television in Pittsburgh, Pa, to teaching philosophy, to editing a bioethics journal. I always wrote. And in the back of my head was the novel I'd write someday. But it didn't happen until one day when I was sitting in a sandbox in a park, watching my children play. I was new to Kansas CIty, looking for company. There was another mother there, Adrienne Staff, a transplanted New Yorker. And as those things go, the ex-nun and nice Jewish girl from New York  glommed on to each other and discovered we not only liked one other a lot, but we both had a burning desire to write. And so we did. Together. We found a wonderful agent and published (some together, some alone) 25 to 30 novels.

Though Adrienne went on to other things, I started writing mysteries some 10 years later, again inspired and helped along by a life-time friend, this time Nancy Pickard (See "Sally's Porch" for Nancy's mug shot).

My life today...
After lots of years of writing early in the morning before heading out to my editing job in a publishing house, I now have the wonderful luxury of writing full-time--sitting on my porch or in a coffee shop or library. Or tootling off to Cape Ann (where the seaside knitters series is set) to research new adventures for the knitters, and in between, to visit my daughter Aria, her husband John--and Luke and Ruby—who live in Gloucester on Cape Ann.

My son Todd lives in California with his wife, Laila, and Danny, our youngest, is here in Kansas City with Claudia and their two sons, Atticus and Julian. It's a lovely time of life for Don and me, filled with the joy four grandchildren bring--and their parents and our children and spouses are pretty terrific people as well. Photos on the right are the lights of our life (from top to bottom): Atticus Sage, Ruby Jane, Luke Robert, and Julian James.

And that's all she wrote....for now....