Snapshot
A walk in the great outdoors? I’m in. A donkey will carry the sleeping bags? Can we bring the donkey’s brother so there’s a pair? A rumbling bus ride through mountainous villages? I’m on board. Add some chickens in a crate tucked in between suitcases on the luggage rack, a seatmate reeking of garlic and missing a front tooth, and I’ve got a story by sundown. I write about real life. It’s all outside the window (or in the bus terminal or my own backyard) waiting to be written down, as long as there’s tea with milk and sugar at four p.m. with a cookie on the side.
Books
Current Book Project
I did all the things a mother does when her children struggle with mental health: I found doctors, read books, joined a support group, asked questions, and found a therapist. All of that helped—but not as much as what my family and I learned about survival skills when hiking up a massive waterfall in Laos, waist-deep in water and surrounded by a million spiders. We had to keep moving and we had to let go of our children’s hands. While living abroad with the Foreign Service, for years we navigated around new places. When we came home, mental health crises put us right back into unknown terrain. We figured it out before and we would figure it out again.
What’s it like to wade through dark waters? Sometimes it’s an adventure. Sometimes it’s scary as hell. Sometimes it’s both.
72k-word manuscript available to agents upon request
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