I'm an emerging writer with a curious assortment of previous careers, including an actor in theater and television, middle school educator, nonprofit director and youth advocate, owner/operator of a specialty lumber business, and the former two-term mayor of a small city in Southern California. At one point in my youth I was a circus performer, who rode a llama, a water buffalo, and a Brahma bull in front of cheering crowds, quite without my parents’ knowledge. I live in Northern California with my husband Michael and my dog Molly. When not writing, I work with teenagers and with rescued horses, both of whom keep me grounded in this mysterious and challenging world we inhabit together

My short fiction appears in the literary journals Midnight Circus and The Binnacle as well as the anthology Legendary Stories: What Went Wrong. My story "Stuffy" won first place in the YA category of the 2015 Writers Digest Popular Fiction Awards. My novel "The Moon Ran After Her" is a fictionalized account of the experiences of women in my late husband's family who survived the Armenian genocide. In addition, I have two collections of off-beat, dark tales and a middle-grade novel, all aspiring to publication.

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