Since I was four, I loved reading and I could understand more complex words than other children my age, so I picked up as many books as I could find. As my father worked a little cotton candy stand outside, I’d go to work with him, find a spot in the floor in front of the magazine rack and read until he closed down for the night. In the 1980’s, True Crime magazines were all the rage, so I ended up with a possibly unhealthy fascination with morbid articles found inside them. I figured I’d end up writing crime fiction when I was older, but as a child, enough true crime had been committed against me that I couldn’t stomach the thought of writing anything close to that genre, in my early teen years.
With a tumultuos home life, I decided to begin writing at age 13. I could create worlds where I wasn’t living in a hoarder house and didn’t have to fight off unwanted advances. These worlds were my saviors. They kept me safe. My local church youth group also gave me hope, yielding a higher power that I could look up to when times were rough. The kids in that youth group began to read my work. When I saw that I could bring them to tears of joy or sadness, I wondered if there was a real future for me in Journalism of some sort. I took my first class in seventh grade and that was all she wrote….. (Hmm, yes, pun intended.)
Today, I’m the survivor of sexual abuse and hoarder (pets and material items) parents. I give credit to my parents, though, at times, there were different decisions they could have made, they engrained the love of Jesus deep in my soul. I am now the devoted wife of a wonderful, loyal, loving husband, the proud mother of four kids, a ecstatic grandmother, and a fur-baby pet mom. Paws and Claws Pet Rescue in Cherryville, NC is my contribution to help end homelessness for unwanted pets.