murder.booklocker.com

Although I live in Des Plaines, Illinois (right next door to Park Ridge and just outside Chicago), I belong to the Park Ridge Senior Center. I grew up visiting my maternal grandparents who lived in Park Ridge, as well as my aunt, uncle and cousins. Both my parents are graduates of Maine East High School (that was before there was a Maine West where I went or Maine South where Hillary Clinton went!). My uncle, Stanley Neal, was on the police force in Park Ridge which is, perhaps, why I chose the name Stanley for my detective.

At my present age of fifty-nine, I’ve had several careers: Salvation Army officer, computer programmer, website designer, and writing instructor. I’ve taught classes in creative writing, poetry, memoir, short-shorts, etc. for the Chicago Department of Aging as well as the Park Ridge Senior Center.

In 2005 I received my master’s degree in writing from DePaul University and took a turn teaching composition at Truman College in Chicago. My work has been published in Grub Street, Off the Rocks, Moon Journal, and Threshold, the DePaul literary magazine.

I am fascinated by people, especially the dynamics within the senior center, and have nothing but admiration for the fearless way in which the current director navigates the minefield of interpersonal relations. I like to think that I am a keen observer of random situations, encounters in the receptionist’s office or lobby, my own “senior” parents and their behaviors, opinions, and that this contributed to the realism of my novel.

Having little experience outside the classroom in writing fiction, it came as a surprise when I realized how easily murder flowed through my fingers to the keyboard! Short story murders had somehow come up in a class that I was teaching. I proposed that the senior center sponsor a “Murder She Wrote” contest. Several of the entries I wrote had potential, I thought – one in particular about pinochle players. This evolved over months into the novel, PARK RIDGE: A Senior Center Murder.

I have a partner of twenty-seven years, one dog, one cat, and am a member of the Emily Dickinson International Society and the Illinois Philological Association.