Where the Stories Begin…
I can’t remember a time when stories weren’t part of my life. Long before I thought of myself as a writer, my imagination was already creating characters and giving them lives of their own. Some of my earliest companions existed only in my imagination—and apparently even imaginary people needed a dog named Plug.
Life, however, had a few stories of its own to write. I once imagined myself living in Dallas, wearing business suits and high heels and carrying a briefcase. Instead, life dropped me onto a farm in rural Louisiana, where high heels are more of a hindrance in a cow pasture and the characters include cows, chickens, guineas, and more than a few weeds with an attitude.
Somewhere along the way, I discovered that the life I hadn’t planned was much closer to the one I needed. I learned to slow down, pay attention, work with my hands, and appreciate the ordinary things that are surprisingly easy to miss when you’re moving too fast. Those experiences eventually found their way onto the page, first through a website and newspaper columns and later through books about simple living.
But the part of my imagination that once created imaginary friends never went anywhere. It was still quietly building people and places of its own. Eventually, those stories began finding their way onto paper, too.
Today, I write both nonfiction and fiction. My Simple Life books grew from things I’ve lived, learned, tried, gotten wrong, and occasionally managed to get right. My fiction takes me somewhere else entirely—to small Southern towns filled with people who have secrets to keep, mysteries to solve, lives to live. Some even have an unfortunate tendency to stumble across dead bodies.
The books may look very different from one another, but I don’t think the storyteller behind them is. I’m still interested in people, the places they call home, the choices they make, and the ordinary moments that can change a life. Sometimes those stories are true. Sometimes they’re completely imaginary. And sometimes I’m not entirely sure where some of those characters came from.
Maybe that’s why I still love writing after all these years. I get to sit down with a blank page and discover who—or what—is waiting for me there.
