E Journey

I'm a realist in my writing, as well as my art. I don't have as much imagination as many other writers—a handicap (or strength) that comes partly from my training and experience as a mental health researcher/evaluator and program developer. I'm also a flâneuse—a female observer-wanderer. So, I watch, and observe. And listen. That's where the meat of my writing comes from.

But I’m also a sucker for happy endings. I find enough that depresses me about real life, but seek no catharsis by writing about it. I want escape, entertainment. I don’t strive to enlighten. Not consciously, anyway, but because my previous training has given me a bias, I’m interested in the inner lives of characters, including the passages they go through.

 I’m inspired by Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell and their awesome feminist heroines. So, I tend not to rely on broad shoulders and heaving bosoms. Instead, I go into protagonists' thoughts and emotions, their conflicts and their joy, their struggles to reach balance and grow. My novels deal with insecurities and disappointments, love/hate relationships with parents, characters who seem to behave out-of-character, and even life events not typically included in romantic fiction.

I have a book blog here:

and musings on travel, art, and food here: Journey on a Limb