A little about me:
Originally from Florida, I moved to Wilmington, North Carolina for graduate school but ended up living there six years. As of August 2006 I'm calling Longview, Texas home.
For undergrad I went to the University of Florida (Go, Gators!) and received a BA in English with high honors and a minor in Religion. In 2003 I received my MFA in fiction from UNC Wilmington. Since that time, I’ve published articles in The Carolina Times, a local Wilmington magazine; Christian devotionals in Devo Zine, a short story in the literary journal, The Ankeny Briefcase as well as another story in Relief: A Quarterly Christian Expression.
In my personal life I married Kevin, a fellow Gator alum, in August 2001. In July 2005 we brought home our first child, Kaden Dmitriy. Kaden was adopted from Volgograd, Russia at age 16 months. In November of 2007 we added to our clan again by welcoming our first foster child, 11 months old at the time. "Blue" is still with us and we're hoping to be able to adopt him as well.
About my writing:
I have completed two book-length projects: Horseshoe Circle and Faith and Kissing. Horseshoe Circle, a novel of about 60,000 words is told in short, titled chapters much like the Cisneros book House on Mango Street. The story explores how two people who begin their lives in the same place find themselves going in very different directions. Forever connected by the mythology they invent to explain their childhood and the Christian faith they somewhat share, the girls work to continue their relationship. The novel concludes when they are in their twenties and each has a son.
Faith and Kissing is a collection of stories all about girls and women dealing with God, men or both. I worked on it for my graduate thesis but have added one story ("Wanda after Richard") since that time. Because the ages of my protagonists range from 14 (Mesa, in the title story) to mid fifties (Wanda as well as Trudy in "Marital Ties") I think this collection would work well for a mother/daughter book club.
