Elaine D Walsh

Nimitz Highway and River Street is an intersection on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. This is where I impatiently came out of the womb ready to start on my own personal history. I grew up in upstate New York against the backdrop of the flowering women’s rights movement with different ideas from my mother as to what my life as a woman should be. In college, I majored in psychology with the intent of being a “death & dying” counselor. This would be my paying job while I wrote the next great American novel. Plan B kicked in and I graduated with a B.A. in English, packed my car, and upset my parents by moving to Florida in search of my destiny. Without ever having taken one business course, I created my own brand and became a successful business executive by day and women’s fiction writer by night. So far, I have lived a Lifetime Movie Network life, a mixture of extraordinary, ordinary, mundane, and terrifying, providing me great inspiration and fanning my creative flame. My father imbued in me a strong sense of family. He brought to life the words unconditional love. From my mother, I gained an appreciation for the complexities of relationships and richness in life one finds exploring and experiencing everything from a recipe, to a historical site, to lunch with friends, or a glass of wine. She was a collector of experiences. We journeyed together and grew as individuals and as mother-daughter. I shared her journeys battling cancer, surviving one and succumbing to another. In one of our last soulful conversations before she died, she told me she was glad I also had a daughter and she hoped I would enjoy my own daughter as much as she enjoyed me. The most powerful influences in my life and my stories are being a daughter, mother, friend, and soul mate. But as a successful women’s fiction writer, does this surprise anyone?