I
wanted to be a veterinarian.
As
a child growing up in the 1970s in Maryland, I'd been writing stories about
animals, and in middle
school
my animal husbandry class suggested I had the knack. Then we had to give
vaccines to the
bunnies
and I nearly fainted.
"What
do you like to do?" Mom asked. "Write" was my only answer; I'd been doing
that since I was eight,
telling
tales about my stuffed animals. So she told me a living could be made as
a journalist, and showed
me
local newscaster Jim Vance looking sleek in Washingtonian Magazine.
Late
nights smoothing down waxed copy for the high school paper gave way to
much of the same at Boston
University's
Daily Free Press, and then came the real world. I freelanced, I
wrote fiction, I freelanced,
I
wrote fan fiction, I freelanced, and finally I landed a full-time job in
New York, covering soap operas.
This
never fails to elicit a giggle, but soaps are the core of all storytelling,
from oral histories to Dickens
to
"General Hospital," we're all entranced by the continuing melodramatic
story arc. After five
years
of craziness -- not all of it on the screen -- it was time to jump ship
for another kind of Hollywood,
the
kind where they actually returned your phone calls. My tenure with The
Hollywood Reporter is
truly
the most fun I've ever had on a job.
Meanwhile,
I continue to write fiction -- though the stories are about real people
now. Finding an audience
isn't
so hard, but finding an agent or an editor who thinks they can sell what
I'm putting out -- that's been
the
real challenge. Meanwhile, the words and the ideas keep coming.
Thanks
for stopping by, and I look forward to any feedback you may have.
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