What have I written so far? Besides the hardware and software manuals I wrote as a technical writer, I've written short stories for children and for adults, poems, several humor pieces, some informative articles, and a few personal essays. My primary focuses are fiction and humor, so I often write humorous fiction.

For a previous National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge, in which people attempt to write a novel of 50,000 words or more during the month of November, I wrote a 58,466-word first draft of a young adult novel. With the help of some excellent critiques, I'm still revising the resulting novel (on & off), Chasing Monday, a coming-of-age novel about a 15-year-old girl. My other novels in progress include Can't Beet It, a humorous YA novel about a guy with a lousy job, Purple Panic, a humorous midgrade book involving fourth graders and chewing gum, and End of the Line, a YA novel about the aftermath of a suicide. If I can nail the logistics down, I may also try a time travel novel, tentatively titled Since You're Gone.

Want to sample my writing? I'm not comfortable putting my current writing projects on the web, but there are links below to a few of my previous manuscripts that are online. You can also read some of my first (and a few second) sentences, as a teaser.

Published Works

• Several short articles and profiles, Garden Center magazine
• Owen Nolan's Square-Wheeled Bike, Summer Shorts anthology from Blooming Tree Press
• High Dive, Summer Shorts anthology from Blooming Tree Press
• In With The Old, Once Upon A Time
• Oh, I Wished I Were an Oscar Mayer Winner, SCBWI Bulletin
  
• Falling Through the Quacks, Tall Tales and Short Stories, Vol. II from Tall Tales Press
  
• A Name for All Time, The First Line
  
• High Dive, Guideposts for Kids
  
• Supplication, Purpose
  
• All's Fair at Science Fairs, On the Line
  
• The Diet, Peeks & Valleys
  
• Mom's Chair, Welcome Home
  
• Inside Out House, Guideposts for Kids
  
• Fast Food for Thought, ByLine
  
• By Any Other Name, Welcome Home
  
• Goofy About Writing, ByLine
  
• When the Muse Strikes Out, Once Upon A Time
  
• Holly McPolly McDolly McBean, Half-Price Books' 2001 Say Good Night to Illiteracy collection
  
• Mine was one of three poems from the book read aloud by singer/songwriter Sara Hickman on a promotional CD for Half-Price Books' charitable Half Pint Libraries program.
  
• Dear Editor, Once Upon A Time
  
• Making Your Place on the Corporate Intranet, Intercom
  
• Rabbit Fever, published as Crazy as a March Hare over Dusty, Austin American-Statesman
• The Canon and the Can, CheeseNet (this one hardly counts as published, but I like it, anyway!)
  

Under Development

• If I Were Little
  
• Red Feather
  
• Can't Beet It
  
• Sage Struck
  
• Car Troubled
  
• For Better or For Worse
  
• The Jungle in My House
  
• Lainie and Jill
  
• Through the Glass
  
• Toothless Wondering
  
• Second Looks
  
• Ending Some of It
  
• A manuscript about flamingos
  
• a YA time travel manuscript
  
• a humorous chapter book mystery series
  
• The Zoo That Grew
  
• Magic Socks
  
• Warm Day in Winter
  
• Pig for a Night
  
• Uh-Oh
  
• Purple Panic
  
• Quench
  
• Chasing Monday
  
• End of the Line
  

          and various others in early stages....

Updated 4/21/08