As a writer—fiction and non-fiction—author, editor, book reviewer, teacher,
and artist, I am a woman of many projects.

I grew up in Upstate New York during the 1950s where I romped in fields
of goldenrod and wild blackberries, and played along the banks of
Nine Mile Creek. This setting and these memories provide the inspiration
for the novel I just completed, titled appropriately, Nine Mile Creek.

In 2004, I co-authored a book for teachers about using digital technologies
in the classroom. For many years, I've served as the President of Sahalie
Publishing, a non-profit, project-based group of creative thinkers.

In 2006 I retired from education to focus on a full-time literary career. Since then, I’ve studied under
successful fiction writers and screenplay writers and memoirists. I read authors whose words have
filled my soul and inspired me to find my own words—Wallace Stegner, Amy Tan, Pearl Buck, Jim
Harrison, Joan Didion, Annie Proulx, John Steinbeck, Lillian Hellman, and Jack Kerouac, to name just a
few.

To write what others might stay up all night to read is to be willing to practice and learn every day. In  
my quest to become a better writer, I attend author readings and lectures. I read religiously what
agents and editors have to say about exceptional writing and the complex pursuit of publication. Every
month, I read my copy of Poets & Writers cover to cover, submit short stories to literary journals, and
pay my fair share of writing contest submission fees. I am a member of Backspace, Women in Portland
Publishing, and Willamette Writers.

Since 2006, I’ve completed a memoir and a short story collection, and recently completed
a young adult novel, Nine Mile Creek. I’ve published short fiction in the Oregon Literary Review  and
the Ink-Filled Page Anthology of 2007.  

I started writing fiction at the age of eight, and have kept it up all my life. A long time ago, I wrote a
serialized soap opera for the Eugene Magazine, “As the Rain Falls.” I borrowed so much juicy material
from my friends and their foibles, to save my skin I wrote under the nom de plume, La Plume. Since then
I’ve used Camille LaPlume as a handle in all kinds of situations. Now that I’ve exposed my cover, I’ll have
to think of something new should I reinvent myself as a spy.