Writing allows me to explore places I love, that I ve been to, or seen only in mind-travels.  These landscapes evoke memories of those who have gone before me, the people who live and breathe in my poetry and prose, imbued with food, wine, music, and dance.

Images appear and my imagination begins to soar: a house built on the side of a mountain in Sicily, an Apache village, a Chinese dragon, a Russian ballet school.  Stories unravel before me as if I'm watching a movie and I follow the characters in my fiction to see what they ll do next. Who they are is closely tied to where they have been and where they are going. Generations before me have given me a gift of profound inner memory, which reveals itself when I explore other cultures, religions and epochs.  I let my feelings buoy me like wind in a kite.

Cooking Lessons is my debut collection of poems adventures of a wayfarer celebrating the enchantment of life, love, family and food.  The poetry settings vary in landscapes, a visualization in language to where I've voyaged.

In my novel The Secret Language of Women a Eurasian woman wants more than anything to be a healer in China.  On the brink of the Boxer Rebellion, between the wreckage of her storm-tossed life, her dreams conjure the sailor she kissed in the Summer Palace when she was seventeen.
  
In Lemon Blossoms, a young girl suffers injuries both physical and emotional, which lead her to oppose her parents wish to marry.  She desires to enter a convent, but her destiny lies elsewhere.  Along the path of discovering who she is, she becomes a midwife and wife.

The people in the stories I summon persevere through personal trials. Their lives are fraught with difficulty as they seek an accord with their surroundings and the Universe, as do many of us.    

What are the things that matter in a life? Living and loving to the best of our capabilities, despite challenge and heartbreak, and at the end of life, discoveries that transcend death, or suggest that death may not be an end but a means to rebirth.

My stories initiate questions, evoking the importance of setting and place in every person's life.  Where we come from is vital to where we re going recognizable universality and the promise of transformation.  No need to knock please come in and be welcomed.