Writing is a beautiful escape for me - while I take crafting a story, poem or non-fiction book seriously, writing is also a controlled environment where things can make sense, or can be as I would wish them to be. My life is pretty crazy! I work as a choir director, voice teacher and occasional performer (music is my college degree). I have two special needs kids (one with moderate/severe autism, and one with HLHS - a major congenital heart defect) and a website that I created to help parents of special-needs and medically fragile kids (www.thecompletecaregiver.com). I hope one day, in addition to serving parent-caregivers, to create jobs for people with autism in my Asheville, NC community, if the business end of my Complete Caregiver work comes through. I also am working to spread the help my site and book can give as far and wide as I can, through speaking engagements, and working with physicians, medical and therapeutic professionals, families and parents. My children have given me inspiration to reach out to others in our community of families with medically fragile and developmentally disabled kids. My book "The Complete Caregiver Journal Workbook" is an effort to help simplify the complexity of medical information, caregiving needs and self-care from an organizational and stress management point of view. I keep it in my purse all the time, as I never know when I'll need it! The "fantasy" writing I do is also a labor or love - fantasy and science fiction being my favorite genre's, with mysteries following a close third. I was honored to be included twice in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress anthology. The story "Oaths" in volume XV, was my first attempt at publication, so it has a special place in my heart as the story that affirmed me as a writer. I still have stories and novels waiting to be finished, with characters that pop into my head as if impatient to move on from where I left them ("Oops! I guess I did leave you alone in that motel room surrounded by supernatural enemies...um...Sorry..."). I hope to finish more of these tales in the years to come, writing in the cracks of life where the inspiration seeps in and meets time, effort and whatever ability I can bring to the process.