Being somewhat backward, my career came first and then my education.   While married and raising three sons, I developed a career in insurance claims management and administration that lasted for over 25 years. During this hectic time, I never gave up my ambition to be a professional writer. This desire was partially met after preparing training manuals for my claims staff and writing articles for insurance trade journals; security winning out over my aspirations to write fiction.   Finally, in l996, I bit the bullet and took early retirement believing my next career would be as a writer.  It didn't take long to come to the realization that writing isn't a talent, it is mostly a learned art. After attending many writer workshops and conferences and attempting to write and giving up on three novels, I decided I needed a more formal education.  I enrolled at Marylhurst University near Portland, Oregon graduating in 2006 with a degree in English Literatureand Writing.   The day finally arrived with the publication of my first novel, Deception Cove, in October 2010 with Wingsepress.com. I have used my career in insurance to create the plot of my mystery/com romanic suspense novel.  My heroine. Meredith Davison, is an insurance investigator is given an assignment to investigate the theft of four valuable paintings from an art gallery on Cape Cod. This routine assignment leads her to  marrying the wrong man, becoming enmeshed in drug smuggling and murder. Wanting to solve the mystery surrounding her husband's secret life, her journey leads her to Oregon's north coast where runs afoul of the FBI and into the sights of a hired killer.    On a personal note, I've been married to Donald Lindstedt since 1997. We live in Cannon Beach, Oregon. In addition to my three sons, I have nine grand-children, two great-grandsons; three step-children, five step-grandchildren and three step great-grandchildren. Even though this brood loves to visit us at the beach; fortunately, they don't all come at the same time. 

My poem, "Ladies of Chedigny," placed third in Willamette Writer's 2003 Kay Snow award. In 2004, my short story, "Simply to Fly," was one of the ten finalist's at the Pacific NW Writer's Conference. While in college, I read my paper, "Mrs. Dalloway's Party Consciousness,at the 2005 Virginia Woolf Conference at Lewis and Clark University in Portland, Oregon. In 2007, I delivered my essay, Shakespeare--Perchance a Woman, at the Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon.