Biography

... people in the audience. I thought I'd die of embarrassment.) The first, and last , time I ever sang in public was when I was picked for the lead in a musical version of “Goldilocks.” I was chosen because I had stage experience and the requisite long blonde hair. When the musical's director discovered that I couldn't sing in any known key it was too late! The solution was to have Goldilocks smile a lot, while the other characters sang around me.

Although I was in about a dozen plays, I never wanted to be an actress. My dream was to become a playwright. Writers didn't have to sing, or wear heavy makeup, or kiss a man in public.

After high school and a year at a nearby junior college, I boarded a train (couldn't afford a plane ticket) and took off for New York City. All the money I had in the world—$380—was zipped into the secret compartment of my one nice handbag. For the entire fifteen hours on the train, I never let go of that bag.

In New York, I couldn't get anyone to read the three plays I'd written. I was down to my last $29 when a woman approached me on the street, in front of a Deli I'd just decided I couldn't afford to enter. She said she was the wife of a photographer who shot illustrations for romance magazines and asked if I'd like to pose for him. I was too naïve to realize what that offer might have been, but I was lucky. The woman's husband was a legitimate photographer, and she worked in the studio as his assistant. My first assignment was to wear a nightgown and sit on the side of a rumpled bed. Next to me was an empty pair of man's pajamas. I was told to look “distressed” because the story I was illustrating was titled: “Who's Responsible For Wedding Night Failures?”

Other crazy assignments followed, such as being two sisters in a lifeboat. For one I used my natural hair: for the other I wore a dark wig. The photographer put both of me together in the darkroom, and added the raging sea around the little boat.

While I was supporting myself this way, I fell in love with photography. As soon as I was able to buy cameras, I practiced on people's children and their pets—and by capturing the antics of animals in zoos.

A year later, I was a wildlife photographer living in East Africa.

Every job I've had (among them: taking pictures, writing for a teenage movie magazine, writing screenplays, teaching screenwriting, working in daytime drama and being vice president of a movie studio)—has led to what I'm doing today: writing mystery novels.

At last, I discovered what I wanted to be when I grew up!

LOVE IS MURDER, the first of my new series, will be published by Berkley Prime Crime on June 1, 2004 . (There'll also be a Large Print Edition, and an unabridged Audio Book.)

To read the first chapter of LOVE IS MURDER, click here.

I hope you'll enjoy the “taste” and will want to read the rest of the book!