A job offer at the National Institutes of Health drew me to Maryland where I eventually met and married my engineer husband. The arrival of our son and then our daughter changed my career to full time mom, or, more accurately, double-full time mom. That period, along with eventually pulling me back to the piano as a school choral accompanist, also introduced me to arts and crafts. Though far from expert, I reveled in them, trying out everything from knitting and sewing, to crafts requiring glue guns and wire, letting out some of the creativity that necessarily had to be suppressed in the lab.

As the children grew older, my early interests in writing began waving for attention. My first paid publication was a twelve line light verse that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, whose subject happened to be hand-made Christmas gifts. Seeing my words in print was addictive, and I began writing feature articles for local newspapers. Then I turned to fiction.

I had much to learn about writing fiction, but I was helped and encouraged by a terrific group of writer friends so that eventually my first short mystery was accepted for publication in Murderous Intent Mystery Magazine, then another in Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine. My mystery novel, RESORT TO MURDER, was published in December, 2000 to be followed by A TASTE OF DEATH. Both novels feature Maggie Olenski, a high school math teacher who tends to take deadly vacations, and who coincidentally enjoys tennis and skiing nearly as much as I do. A short story featuring Maggie, this time at the beach, appeared in the CHESAPEAKE CRIMES anthology along with several talented members of my local Sisters in Crime.

Now the Craft Corner Mysteries series has begun, and I’ve been meeting many amazing crafts people while going through the process of learning all that my protagonist, Jo McAllister, needs to know. The challenge is to somehow fit murder into that lovely world, but, as we all know, a snake will lurk in every Garden of Eden. The fun I have, as a mystery writer, is dressing up that snake to look like a cuddly koala, or perhaps a sleepy house cat, with sharp claws carefully tucked out of sight.