More than you wanted to know
I am a third generation native Northern Californian. At 17, with my vast experience of the working world, it was my opinion that standard teaching was too easy a career. I wanted a challenge, so teaching autistic children became my target. After finding few college programs in the 1970s that offered courses dealing with autism and many people who thought I was saying "artistic" and kept steering me toward art colleges, I decided to get a degree in Special Education.
I taught in both Nevada and California for seven years as a Special Day Class teacher at the middle school level before deciding that maybe teaching in a regular classroom might be challenging too. Sixteen years later, because I didn't want to die in my 80s or 90s having only tried one career, I stopped teaching before the scent of retirement could grow too enticing. I worked as a certified massage therapist, a corporate trainer for a large health insurance provider, and a reporter and columnist for California's oldest continuously operating newspaper. It's been a downhill slide on the salary scale, but, except for corporate training, an increase on the fun scale.
In 2004, my husband and I both decided to stop doing what we were doing and do something else. It wasn't retirement, but we wanted to look around and see what might be available besides 10-12 hour workdays. We acquired our first dog, a wire-haired Fox terrier we named Sadie, who quickly took over our house and our lives. Between Sadie's feedings and training, I fit in a part-time job as a reporter at the Mountain Democrat, a job with never-ending variety. I thought it was a good way to flex my daily writing muscle and have some fun. It has been all of that and I have won six awards from the California Newspapers Publishers Association for my column--three first place awards, two second place award and a certificate of General Excellence.
In 2010, I wrote a privately published biography for Ossie Scariot, a local success story, and in 2012, I finished my first novel. I made the decision to self-publish , just to see if I could. I could and did, learning more about how books are put together--more than I ever really wanted to know. "In the Pocket of Dreams " was published on Kindle in 2013 and in paperback form through CreateSpace in 2014.
I recently finished the final edits on my second novel, "Flight of the Red Dragonfly" and have decided to try the traditional route to publishing this time. A great literary agent is on my wish list.
I taught in both Nevada and California for seven years as a Special Day Class teacher at the middle school level before deciding that maybe teaching in a regular classroom might be challenging too. Sixteen years later, because I didn't want to die in my 80s or 90s having only tried one career, I stopped teaching before the scent of retirement could grow too enticing. I worked as a certified massage therapist, a corporate trainer for a large health insurance provider, and a reporter and columnist for California's oldest continuously operating newspaper. It's been a downhill slide on the salary scale, but, except for corporate training, an increase on the fun scale.
In 2004, my husband and I both decided to stop doing what we were doing and do something else. It wasn't retirement, but we wanted to look around and see what might be available besides 10-12 hour workdays. We acquired our first dog, a wire-haired Fox terrier we named Sadie, who quickly took over our house and our lives. Between Sadie's feedings and training, I fit in a part-time job as a reporter at the Mountain Democrat, a job with never-ending variety. I thought it was a good way to flex my daily writing muscle and have some fun. It has been all of that and I have won six awards from the California Newspapers Publishers Association for my column--three first place awards, two second place award and a certificate of General Excellence.
In 2010, I wrote a privately published biography for Ossie Scariot, a local success story, and in 2012, I finished my first novel. I made the decision to self-publish , just to see if I could. I could and did, learning more about how books are put together--more than I ever really wanted to know. "In the Pocket of Dreams " was published on Kindle in 2013 and in paperback form through CreateSpace in 2014.
I recently finished the final edits on my second novel, "Flight of the Red Dragonfly" and have decided to try the traditional route to publishing this time. A great literary agent is on my wish list.
