Look and Listen

Biography

A native of Georgia, I grew up in Fairburn, a small town south of Atlanta, where I began writing stories when I was ten. I would sell these stories to my father for a quarter, and since I was quite a prolific writer, I managed to earn enough to treat my brother and sister to the Saturday matinee each week, as well as keep myself supplied with paper and pens and, occasionally, a new Walter Farley novel. The Black Stallion, The Island Stallion, and The Blood Bay Colt were major influences on my budding talent at the time, and although my father never said anything, I was probably guilty of plagiarism, however unintentional. A high school dropout and married at sixteen, I entered college later in life after my children were grown and my husband and I divorced. However, determined to succeed, I earned, first, my bachelor’s degree (1992) then my master’s degree (1995) from the State University of West Georgia; and when I wasn’t studying or working on some project for a class, I was writing poetry and fiction. During my time at the university, I was the recipient of the 1991 Kay Magenheimer Poetry Award and the 1992 Eclectic Award for Fiction, the university’s most prestigious award for prose. In addition, many of my stories and poems were published in the university’s annual literary journal. After my current husband, a college professor, and I moved to Lafayette, Louisiana in August of 1995, I taught high school for two years at St. Thomas More Catholic High School, but then I decided I wasn’t meant to teach high school (too many discipline problems), and I also began teaching college. I am currently an instructor for the University of Phoenix, both at the local campus and online, and I also do some editorial consulting for individuals and businesses in the area. However, when I am not working, I am writing, since that is my passion. In fact, I like to think that I am first and foremost a writer. Everything else is but secondary.

Inspiration

The major influence upon my writing has always been my Southern heritage. I was, after all, shaped and molded into the person—and the writer—I am today by not only Georgia, with its red-clay hills, honeysuckle, and kudzu, but also everything else in my early environment, including a poor but love-filled family life, the Baptist faith, and the town of Fairburn, which was in many ways your typical “sleepy Southern town,” with one traffic light, a Confederate monument in the center of the main thoroughfare, a corner drugstore, a mom-and-pop grocery, and a wealth of colorful and often eccentric characters. Other influences on my writing have been other writers, including but not limited to William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, and Joyce Carol Oates. Faulkner painted a vividly detailed picture of the Old South in novels such as Light in August and Absalom, Absalom, as well as stories like “That Evening Sun” and “Barn Burning.” Faulkner also provided some of the best advice a writer could ever receive when, in his 1950 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, he said, “The problems of the human heart in conflict with itself. . . only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat,” and Faulkner’s words have, in effect, been my guiding light. As for McCullers, another Southern writer, she utilized the recurrent theme of “self-discovery” in most of her novels and stories, including Member of the Wedding and The Ballard of the Sad Café; and this is something I myself strive to achieve—to have my characters learn something about themselves as the story unfolds. They must somehow change from the opening of the story to the end, even if that change is but a realization and acceptance of the tragedy of their own existence. Although not a Southern author, Oates is a consummate storyteller, whose novels, for example, A Garden of Earthly Delights and Wonderland, are peopled with finely crafted characters who are often victims of forces beyond their control. And since I myself believe that we humans are ultimately at the mercy of the capriciousness of fate, I have always enjoyed Oates’ work; and this same theme is evident in many of my stories, as well as my novel, Mustang Summer, whose three main characters feel they are but pawns in the hands of fate, although they valiantly struggle to prove themselves wrong. Of course, in reality, a great many other authors have also influenced my writing, but isn’t this as it should be? After all, writers invariably begin as readers then awaken one day and realize that they want to be the one who tells the story.