I was born in New York City and moved to Indiana, Ohio, back to Indiana, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I was always the new kid at school, attending nine schools in 12 years including four different high schools.
Wherever we moved, one thing was a constantβwe always lived near a library. Books were the friends that never said goodbye and great companions on long, dusty U-Haul trips from one town to the next. Each new apartment or house became home once the books were unpacked.
I was a petty thief as a child, a skilled liar, a card cheat and a Girl Scout. My siblings and I werenβt allowed to watch TV, listen to anything but classical music or eat junk food, so of course we did all three in spades.
Keeping up the moving once I finished high school, I attended two small colleges before finally graduating from Penn State with a degree in Journalism. I got married and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Iβve lived ever since.
Like many fiction writers, Iβve had an assortment of jobs that paid the rent and kept me in postage for the next submission: Reporter, technical writer, freelance copywriter and editor among others. More recently, my rΓ©sumΓ©βs been overtaken by full-time motherhood to two delightful and demanding children.
As a teenager, staying up late devouring the latest Stephen King, I used to wonder what it was like to be married to himβdid his wife sleep uneasily, one hand poised to dial 911? It occurred to me recently that this is what my husband and all crime writersβ spouses might be doing.
I canβt speak for other writers, but Iβve always been fascinated by the dark side, by the potential for evil that lurks in all of us, by what triggers seemingly average people to commit brutal and heinous acts against other human beings.
For me, it always comes back to the matter of choice. In all my writing Iβm interested in exploring those turning points in our lives that make us the people we are and sometimes, for better or worse, the people we never thought weβd be.
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