Still Relevant: 2012 Bio

Perhaps that instructor of my Penn State freshman writing class did know something. My senior year she recognized me by name, an action not reciprocal, and asked me if I was writing. I didn’t know people wrote for fun. Then, and for a long time after, I knew writing as an evil necessary to business, marketing, science, and education. But I could do it. Much like having daily, or so, bowel movements, I could produce those newsletters for The American Red Cross which did raise money as did the numerous letters and press releases necessitated by financial development as well as the reports and findings that go along with working a telephone hot line for troubled youth.

Years of stay-at-home-mommying for a larger than average family while my husband worked two jobs brought about just the right pressure to produce the anthracite coal of completed novels. The mind numbing monotony and loneliness of diapering, gardening, nursing, and sorting mountain ranges of hand-me-down clothing led to reading which led to writing. What I crave, and endeavor to produce, is a page-turner with a little more edge and little more real than then most of what is offered in the CBC market.

Perhaps I am not the only one who can’t go on a retreat. A good novel that holds meaty entertainment can give a girl a needed break from her own set of problems. But only if she can buy into the premise and find the characters compelling and believable.

I'm also tired of preachy fiction and novels that contain "everyman" characters or stereotype characters with whom it is obvious I am supposed to identify and thereby learn a life lesson. Characters need to have just that: character!

I am a Christian and shy away from non-Christian fiction because it is often insensitive to faith, Christianity especially, being a life choice that any character with sense would make. Further, although I think Christians might shy away from sex too much, secular romance has ruined the word romance because of too much sex. Finally, with regard to language, if a character is trash-mouthed, I'd rather the author just allude to it, as some Christian writers do, than have vulgarities printed on every page.

Apart from the large audience in which the current fiction market revels, is a potentially larger group that wants a little more edge and a little more real. They have cyberspace at their fingertips, while what they crave is a page-turner in their hands where they are not tethered to the indoors, a power source, or their own set of problems.