I got a degree in English Literature (California State University Northridge, 1976) before an un-slaked thirst for adventure and foreign travel led me to enlist in the United States Air Force. I was a radio and television broadcast technician, and sometime Public Affairs troop, and served for 20 years in places as various as Greece, Spain, Japan, Korea, Greenland and Ogden, Utah, in a wide assortment of duties and pleasures which included midnight alt-rock DJ, TV news anchor, video-production librarian, radio and television writer and producer, production manager.... and base tour guide. On one completely colorful occasion, I drove a bright orange Volvo sedan across Western Europe from Athens to Zaragoza, Spain, accompanied only by a small and cranky child.

In 2002, I started writing for the military-oriented weblog, “Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Brief” (now “The Daily Brief”) at www.ncobrief.com, writing essays and commentary on matters historical, personal, political, cultural, literary and military under the "nom du blog" of "Sgt. Mom". I took it over as senior editor/manager in 2004, while working as an office administrator and manager, catalog editor, executive secretary and classical music announcer, before I decided that writing full-time was what I really, really wanted to be doing. My novels and the memoir "Our Grandpa Was an Alien" all grew out of essays that I wrote for the blog.  My historical novel "To Truckee's Trail" also grew out of a series of essays for that blog. My current project, the "Adelsverein Trilogy" grew out of interest in the founding of the town of Fredericksburg, Texas, just up the road a piece.
  

"The Adelsverein Trilogy" - the epic story of the German settlements in the Texas Hill Country will be available in December, 2008 from Strider-Nolan Publishing. Imagine, 7,000 German immigrants and their families, dumped onto the untamed Texas frontier in 1847 and left to fend for themselves. What kind of life could they build for themselves and their children? Adelsverein has the story, offering operatic levels of adventure, drama, war, true love, sudden death and stolen children. (And cows. Lots of cows. This is Texas, after all.)

Celia Hayes Books & More
About my books and me, some essays and relevant links. There is also a page to pre-order my next book project, the complete "Adelsverein Trilogy", which will be delivered just before the official release date of December 10, 2008

The Daily Brief
All the other stuff; the social and political.

Notable Writers
A website assembled by a local San Antonio writer

The Independent Authors' Guild
A consortium of writers who are published by small or independent presses