Words. Books. Magazines. Movies. Television. 

The Webisphere!

Whatever the outlet, once I found something—an idea, a story, or simply something shiny that demanded explanation—I inevitably fell down its rabbit hole. Still do. When I was five, I missed the Fourth of July parade in small-town Fair Oaks, California that we’d all been waiting for because I was sitting in my bedroom reading a comic book. They finally came home to find me quietly curled up in an old rocker, transported to the world of Riverdale. Everyone wondered how I hadn't noticed that the house was empty and silent for the past two hours. And from there, we all knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.  

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Everything I found in those rabbit holes—from Archie comics to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to Frankenstein and the Romantics to Toni Morrison's Beloved—has helped shape the writer, journalist, editor, presenter, and researcher I am. I love solving problems and finding resources. The espresso bar company Primo’s Espresso Americana, based in Marin, California (to which I commuted from Oakland), hired me as a barista and then a manager. They asked me to copyright their logo, something that I knew nothing about. So I did. They wanted to start a mail order business for their coffee, so I did that, too. 

Then I got itchy for a new challenge: chasing my childhood dream. No, not ballet school or NASA; I wanted to be an editor and a writer, so I went back to school. While finishing my degree at Sonoma State University, I looked around for a paying internship. BuySide Magazine was looking for an intern and took me on as a junior researcher. I was ecstatic. I went home wondering if they had really understood my resume and that my degree wasn’t completed.  But they’d asked me to start on Monday, so I went. I sat on my cushionless broken-down swivel chair in the little beige alcove off the hallway to the editorial department at the dingy folding table they gave me, and I searched for new topics and ideas for articles and profiles. I read, found resources, gave recommendations, proofread, wrote, and worked long hours. In a few short years I was promoted to managing editor. 

After a decade, I went off to Wisconsin and wrote news articles for the Janesville Gazette

and taught every flavor of communications that a Wisconsin tech college needs. After a decade spent in the Great White North of the Midwest, I moved to Houston. I was invited to be a docent for the temporary exhibit, the International Exhibition of Sherlock Holmes, at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Because I know some things about Sherlock Holmes. When it traveled to another museum, the directors asked me to stay on and work in the permanent halls, any one I liked. I repaid their faith in me by being the nightmare of the lecturers, teachers, and senior docents—I ask a lot of questions. 

I gravitated toward the Hall of the Americas where I could fall back on my personal studies, focused on the Maya of Mesoamerica. Instead, I fell in love with the North America section. I asked to help with the “touch carts,” the mobile and stationary displays of artifacts that visitors can touch and hold. The directors smiled and gave me the chair responsible for the touch carts (all six of them). Then an artifact was donated and I was asked to assess it through research and authentication, then make a recommendation to include or return it. I was thrilled. And I wrote some more, including  helping develop an idea of a published Sherlockian friend (Sherlockian: someone who reads, or studies, or discusses, or writes analyses of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Great Detective). We took it from a concept to a published textbook for Gender, Lit, and Social Studies calledVillains, Victims, and Violets: Agency and Feminism in the Original Sherlock Holmes Canon. 

I’ve hosted panels with some of the most high-profile stock market financial analysts. I went from being mildly terrified of public speaking to teaching college students how to write and speak without stage fright. I’ve kept up with my poetry sporadically while working on a novel and helping to edit a friend’s novel in progress (which is brilliant). I’ve taken a textbook idea, researching its subject, finding experts to contribute chapters, acquiring an academic publisher, and completing the manuscript with images, cover art, and an extensive index. 

It’s been a lot of hard work, and I can’t wait for what’s next. I hope it’s apparent that I can help you in every way with your projects from start to finish. Let me help bring your dreams and ideas to life.