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In 2003, I published my first novel, Waterfront Property. Soon afterwards, a funny thing happened when kayaking with my childen: we got lost on the Chickahominy River. I rushed home and wrote the novella, Up a Creek (2004). Both of these were published with iUniverse and are no longer available through the publisher. I have 37 copies of Up a Creek, though, and I would be more than happy to sell you one ... or more.

I have written three books about Tidewater Virginia counties for Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series: Gloucester County (July 2006), Mathews County (November 2007), and James City County (March 2009). These were great fun to write and continue to sell well. They are all available through online booksellers as well as chains like Barnes and Noble. If you don't see the one you want in your local bookstore, it can be ordered for you. Just ask.

From time to time, Arcadia's managers ask me to submit new proposals to them and I'd be happy to write another book for them. However, I would need to find more photos. If you have a stash of vintage photos I can work with, let me know!

I have written or am still writing other books that are as yet unpublished (some listed below). If you are a literary agent or publisher and would like more information about one of these manuscripts, please contact me for a full book proposal.

Unpublished Manuscripts

Waterfront Property

Waterfront Property was my first attempt at writing a novel. I was passionate about the topic and wrote the book in just three months. Then, I received a response to my very first query letter and was so excited! Unfortunately, the literary agent didn't want to pursue it. After that I wrote query letter after query letter to other agents. Though I received many polite responses, I finally gave up and self-published.

Self-publishing is interesting. I don't know of any self-published book that's been all that successful. Assistance from an editor is valuable and marketing and distribution support is essential. These are facts of the writing life that I learned. Another important thing that I learned was that I was so passionate about the subject that I came off as quite "preachy." While many people told me that they enjoyed the book, others that knew better probably viewed my first novel as naive. This is a tad embarrassing to me, but I'll live.

And, most importantly, I've put this manuscript back in the unpublished column because I am rewriting it. The basic premise is the same, but I am beefing up the characters and toning done the environmental issues. It's not that they are any less true and scary, it's just that - ah ha! - there is a more subtle way to make the point.

Category: Literary Fiction, Environmental Fiction, Women's Fiction

Queen's Creek

This story also uses Mathews, Virginia, as its setting. The protagonist, when faced with her husband's sudden death and that certain middle-age angst, moves from Richmond to Mathews. She buys the old farmhouse where her Grandmother was born and is haunted by its ghosts as well as her addiction to prescription medications. The small town cast of characters, including the attractive bachelor who lives across the creek, rally around and offer solutions to the imagined and real things that haunt her.

Category: Literary Fiction, Women's Fiction

Pineville

Luke moved his family from a small Blue Ridge Mountains town to New York City, chasing a dream and running away from the uncomfortable truth. When he abandons his family for a starlet from Pineville, his family abandons New York to chase Luke. Once there, a tragedy unfolds that causes them all to reconsider their definition of happiness.

Category: Literary Fiction, Women's Fiction

Depression: A Love Story

A box of love letters from the Great Depression reveals the story of a Norfolk, Virginia, school teacher and her Merchant Marine husband. Based on a real collection of letters, the love story has been changed to protect the memory of the individuals and their living relatives, my relatives. The fiction has been woven around the details of history and the times that the real couple observed.

Category: Historical Fiction

Ancestor Worship

What do you do when you hit the place that amateur genealogists call the "Brick Wall?" One solution is to stop chasing names and start chasing a better understanding of the world in which those ancestors lived. This is the story of my Mathews County, Virginia, ancestors that reaches beyond what is known to what might have been. After all, pirates and indentured servants didn't keep records.

Category: Genealogy, Non-fiction

Driving Around the Chesapeake Bay Watershed

Most of us don't get out on the Bay and its tributary waters as often as we'd like. But we do drive by and over them a lot. Look fast! Working from a list of streams in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed provided by the US Geological Survey, this collection of stories about trips around the watershed gives road warriors something to look for and think about while driving around Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Pennsylvannia, and New York. Lists of named streams and the origin of names are discussed after each travelogue.

Category: Non-fiction

Colonial Gloucester: News and Advertisements from the Virginia Gazette, 1736-1780

Excerpts from news stories, short articles, and advertisements about Gloucester, Virginia, people, places, and events culled using the comprehensive index to known issues of the Virginia Gazette, produced in 1950 by Lester J. Cappon and Stella F. Duff of the Institute of Early American History and Culture (now the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture) bring Colonial Gloucester to life. Articles report events like local elections, marriages, and deaths while advertisements describe real estate, ships for sale, slave auctions, lotteries, and cock matches. Shipping records expose the reality of the Triangle Trade and interdependent nature of the early modern Atlantic world as experience in one Tidewater Virginia county. Hurricanes and ship wrecksl reveal the evergreen newsworthiness of weather and tragedy.

Category: Non-fiction, Local History

 



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