How do I get in touch with you?

You can get in touch through my publisher at info@festinalentepress.com and they will forward anything pertinent.

Do you use a pen name, and if so, why?

This is a two-part answer.

First part:

I wrote my first novel–a tawdry, multi-generation potboiler Women’s Fiction–back in the 1990s. Like most first novels, it took me ten years to complete, along with it being based on my grandmother—a notorious character if ever there was. I spent years making “casual” phone calls to my aunts (my mother having passed away in the 80s) only to have one of them ask me pointedly why did I want to know so much family history. After years of hiding my true purpose, I confessed.

Big mistake.

That aunt, now long passed away, said something that gave me pause. With breathless enthusiasm, she blurted, “We’re all going to be rich!”

We, as in the entire extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Lots of people. Not only had Auntie assumed that I would share the fruits of my labor; even more implausible, she assumed that there would be actual wealth.

My inner reaction was outrage.

Yes, my aunts shared family skeletons with me, but I did not recall them putting their fingers to the keyboard or doing anything that resembled actual work on my novel. Since they were all within their right to pen their own novel or memoir about Grandma, let them write their own damn book!

I finished my epic saga in 2000, when traditional publishing was the only option. I remember telling my aunt about the genuine possibility of rejection letters, which I got—mountains of them! I told her about the slim odds of publishing success, hoping to dampen her vision of champagne wishes and caviar dreams. That didn’t stop her from telling everyone in the family about my book, and its potential for shared wealth.

Soon as I ended that call, I vowed to reveal nothing more about my writing to my family, and that the best course of action moving forward was a pen name.

But as my writing evolved after getting that cliched first novel out of my system and I switched from Women’s Fiction to the more commercial fare of crime novels, I realized there were additional reasons to adopt a pen name.