Tell us about your call to write.

I believe writing is something you are born with.  When you’re in heaven, God gives one baby blond hair, and another baby gets freckles, and another gets big feet, and you get writing.

How did you get your first writing break?

Once my children entered school, I was free to write more, and I did screenplays. I won several major contests for screenwriting, and had a Hollywood agent for four years, but no sales. I began to write non-fiction as a freelance on websites like Guru and Elance. I wrote hundreds of web articles, ebooks, children’s stories and books, and two non-fiction books as a ghostwriter.

As for fiction, I sold about a dozen works to literary magazines and anthologies, but mostly I took rejections. I felt like that Dr. Seuss character in the Sleep Book, the one who is selling “Zizzer-Zoof Seeds which nobody wants because nobody needs.” 

I hope publishing my novel is a breakthrough, anyway.

Do you have any recent releases?

Capstone Fiction, a brand new Christian publisher, just released my medical thriller, Walk Me to Midnight.   I wrote Walk Me to Midnight because I lost my father, mother and sister to cancer.  I sat with all three of them and their incredible hospice nurses during the weeks before they died.  I wanted to give back to these nurses, so I wrote and dedicated this book to them. I take a strong stand against assisted suicide in Walk Me to Midnight. It’s a very scary book and I actually scared myself when I was writing it.

What do you hope to accomplish through your novels?

Most of my writing is about creating something, but occasionally I get on my high horse and write as persuasion, as I did in Walk Me to Midnight. 

When I read other writers’ works, I feel a sense of connection. I recognize and identify with what I am reading, and think, “Yes! I’ve felt that too.” 

Literature enhances my life because writers make meaning and beauty out of everyday occurrences. That is the job of the artist – to step outside and see beauty, truth and meaning in what may appears to everyone else as ordinary or as just a series of random events. Writing at its highest creates meaning, but our mission is also about entertaining and story telling.

 I would like to be that kind of writer.

How do you balance being a mom, wife and writer?

I had four children under seven years old, so I never balanced anything.  I just got through it. My husband and I never used babysitters or housekeepers or had any relatives nearby. There are whole years of my life that are completely missing in a haze of runny noses, diapers, PTO, science projects, and flute lessons.  When our youngest started kindergarten, I had a couple of hours every day for writing. It was like meeting a secret lover for a marvelous rendezvous and tete-a-tete.

Do you think it’s possible to give yourself fully to raising children, writing and keeping in shape? If not, which one has to take a back seat?

I studied Early Childhood in college and later I worked at Sesame Street. This gave me a huge respect for and understanding of the needs of little children.

The first three years of life are a time of tremendous growth and learning.  No job is more important to society than providing little ones with a good beginning.  When a boat is sinking, mothers of small children are always saved first because what they are doing is the most important job of all.  You only get one chance at it, and, as Jackie Kennedy once said, if you blow your children, you blow everything big time.

You have to take care of yourself physically and mentally when the children are little. Otherwise, you’ll lose your temper or go around on automatic pilot – a state in which you don’t have anything spiritually to give to them. You have to rest, spend time with friends and stay mentally stimulated – this is more important than writing if your kids are little. I would always let my housework go so I could sit on the floor and play with the kids.

How do you handle interruptions in your writing life?

When I was a little girl, I wondered why there were so few women writers.  Once I had children, I wondered why there were so many.

If you read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of Her Own, she lays it on the line beautifully.  Women do not create art because they have no money or privacy.  Writing requires both.  You need a “room of your own” – a place where you can lock the door and have hours of privacy, so you can lose yourself in the creative process.  Writing is the “spooky art,” as Norman Mailer said.  You have to go into that trance to channel up characters and plots in your imagination.  You simply won’t be able to that when your children are small. Somebody will always be banging on the door and needing something.

I believe that women can have it all but they cannot have it all at once.  You can have your career and your motherhood in sequence and over the course of your lifetime.  My chance to write was interrupted in terms of years, not minutes.

How do you position yourself to hear God’s voice when all the noises of life are swirling around you?

I started meditating and doing yoga in high school. I also am a swimmer.

Meditation and exercise quiets the mind so that you become more open to God and less self-centered. You realize you are living in eternity so you take yourself less seriously and move through life less hurriedly. This is your life, after all – it’s not just a list of things you have to do. It’s your chance to watch a sunset and count the stars.

Has there ever been a time when God told you to set aside your writing to focus on other areas of your life?

Sometimes people you love really need you, and what’s more important than that? My sister needed me for months when she was sick, and I live in Arizona and she lived in Ohio.  Writing becomes like a pile of sewing you have to put away and then get back to later.

I figure God will give me the time and means to write what He wants me to write.  It may only be one book. St. Francis only wrote a few poems and St. Therese of Lisieux only wrote one book, but what books! What poems!

What advice would you give to writing moms who have their hearts set on publication?

I was mostly writing for an artistic expression.

However, if you want to be published, study the guidelines of publishers and write exactly for those guidelines.  For example, see Barbour’s at http://www.barbourbooks.com/writers_guidelines/.   If you’re not within their guidelines, they reject your writing.  Often publishers hire writers and give them a framework and deadlines for each book, and that’s okay if that’s what you want and you can work that way.  I do that in my day job, which is writing non-fiction.

Along the same lines, one of the best ways to get published is to read books in one genre and then imitate the best of them. 

Publishing and screenwriting is about business, and it’s about making profits and stuff like that. It’s not about art. If you get rejected, it just means your writing is not commercial.

If you keep writing, even after you are rejected many times, you are still ahead because you are practicing your craft.  Writing is like dancing.  To get to Broadway, you have to keep practicing.  You get better and better. So keep dancing.