I grew up in Queens, New York and wrote fiction through my early 20s.  This was my first passion and I returned to it after my children reached their teen years.   I’ve lived most of the past 30 years in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

I was inspired to write my most recent novel, Man Made, when I heard Elon Musk talk about Neuralink, a new technology he was promoting. Its promise is to allow people to communicate directly with computers via a chip inserted in the back of one’s brain. Musk explained that with Neuralink people won’t need to speak to communicate. My jaw hit the floor. Of course, this doesn’t sound nearly as outlandish now as it did in 2020, when this interview occurred.  Even before Musk finished talking I knew I needed to write about people and technology, and people and the natural world. 

My previous novel, Bountiful Calling, is set in central Pennsylvania and focuses on the effects fracking has had on this state. Harrisburg is the state capitol and an excellent vantage point from which to see powerful business and government forces coalesce around the economic potential of fracking.  It also draws people who have stories to tell about the effect of fracking on themselves and their communities.  This book gives voice to various points of view within a highly dramatic and suspenseful narrative. 

My first published novel, The Old Songs, takes place in Queens during the 1950s and early 1960s. Although I came of age in the years after those covered in this book, I did experience the turbulent effects of this era and heard the stories brought forth from it. One reviewer said it read like a “gritty Anne Tyler novel.

One thing I strive for in my writing is to avoid easy answers. I try to carefully construct situations and characters so that at a certain point they place demands on me and I become a conduit for the action that needs to unfold.  My hope is that this approach gives readers the opportunity to reflect on different threads of experience.  Then they can decide what’s important to them, and affirm what rings with the sound of truth.