About

Ravioli-maker in a small family-owned ravioli shop, deli counter worker in a European-style grocery store, these are two of the many jobs I've held while supporting my writing habit. 

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Writing has been a lifelong passion, inspired more than anything by place.  My first novel, The Night She Died, was influenced by a year I spent living in a small Georgia town.  There, I lurked in the grocery store or the local McDonald's and watched people live their lives.

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My newest novel, The Destroying Angel, is set in a fictional version of a real place in the mountains of North Carolina, a small and lovely holler where the ruins of long-abandoned log cabins can still be found and where a dark history of land feuds and murder still lingers. I owe a debt of gratitude to our friend, Lara, who introduced me to the holler, who lovingly restored one of the cabins, and who  shared  some of the holler's history with me.  

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I'd always wanted to write a book set there, and the inspiration came when, on a walk one day my husband and I discovered a beautiful white mushroom growing at the edge of the forest.  Curious, we turned to a local group of mycologists who identified it as a particularly deadly Amanita, a Destroying Angel.  This mushroom plays an important role in the plot of my novel. 

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I hope you'll enjoy finding out more when you read The Destroying Angel.

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