Who I Am

          This picture defines me. I'm a mom and a wife (who loves baseball), and I've been those two things for longer than I was anything else. After supervising these three hooligans through preschool, play groups, swim lessons, and the magic of classic rock, I finally went to college, then morphed from a stay-at-home mom to a self-employed busy editor and writer in the cozy community of Bakersfield, Calif., a town that uses eerie oil derricks, graffiti, and low income housing near major freeways to keep our reputation as California's armpit intact. In reality, if bad air and conservative politics don't bother you, then most people who give Bakersfield a few hours of their time accidentally fall in love with us, much to the horror of their friends and family back home. But to the outside world, Bakersfield's finer points remain a mystery.
          If you'd have asked me 22 years ago what I'd be doing, I wouldn't have said blogging. Well--first, there wasn't such a thing as blogging or social networking when I got married in 1988 (the year I use to measure the beginning of my adulthood), so if technology hadn't advanced to where it is today, and with my ongoing need to communicate with strangers, I'd still be penning letters in longhand to anonymous foreign and domestic recipients and waiting impatiently to see who would respond. Alas! The $44/month I pay for Internet service saves me money on stamps. Second, I didn't discover I could write stuff that others wanted to read until I answered a request in a national magazine, and they used my submission and paid me $50. I was hooked. From that day, I knew I wanted to be a paid writer, but in order to get to this point, I spent many years writing for zilch.

          I've been married to Rob for 22 years, and our story started at a Sizzler restaurant where I deemed him "cute" but not worth breaking my new vow to leave mainstream life for a convent (I'd been on a couple bad dates). Somehow, he persuaded me to go miniature golfing with him and the courtship began. Two months after all-you-can-eat shrimp, we were engaged. Two months after he proposed on Newport Beach, we were married in Carmel, Calif. One month into the marriage, I discovered I was going to have a baby boy, who (we later learned) would grow up and become an overall great left-handed pitcher and professional baseball player. We also have two daughters (who don't play professional baseball but excel in other areas) and a new daughter-in-law-to-be, but it all started at Sizzler when I was 19 years old. If I said it had all been easy, it wouldn't be true. In order to make it to year 22 (or year 8, 11, or 16), it took work and long episodes of stubbornness and unwillingness to start over. Plus, I was just too smart to resist a guy who showed up to our first date wearing yellow jeans.

          I still consider myself a stay-at-home mom, but now I'm also an employed-at-home writer, editor and social media manager who struggles daily with laundry, cat vomit, and procrastination. I've worked as a substitute teacher, magazine editor, and freelance writer, but I'm happiest when I'm motivating writers to trust their passion and finish their novel, or helping to make someone's manuscript grammatically pleasing. I love Facebook (find me there!), Twitter, and all my social media clients, who entrust me with their companies, and I LOVE HALLOWEEN. (Click on Alter Ego above to find out more about my dark side.)


Thank you to Jessica Frey Photography for these amazing family photos. You are the epitome of greatness when it comes to capturing memorable images. xo