...I could not consent to deliver judgment upon any one's manuscript, because an individual's verdict [is] worthless...The great public [is] the only tribunal competent to sit in judgment upon a literary effort.
                                                                                                Mark Twain 
- "Concerning the Carnival of Crime in Connecticut"

 Welcome to the writing website home of Life is Ridiculous and Fountain of Marvelous.

I’m a writer who can’t stand being forced to fit into a category, on bookstore shelves or anywhere else. That might be because my life is a tangle of contradictions. I am a deaf guitarist. I’m a Catholic woman in her forties who can’t stop saying the F word. I’m an ex-CEO who married her high school sweetheart fifteen years after high school and moved to suburbia to raise two toddler step kids. I’m a hot-rodder and rock and roller who knows way too many soccer moms. I’m an obsessive blogger and uncoordinated kick boxer. I have way more dogs than any failed dog trainer should have.

I read Twain, Hunter Thompson, and anything Dave Barry. I live on Starbucks and Nicorette gum. The only movie I like is Gone with the Wind. I love Scarlett. She’s weak and tough and kind and mean and full of delusions like real people are.

I wrote my first book, Life Is Ridiculous, in 2006. Like Fountain of Marvelous, it is a collection of big little stories for readers living in our frantic world who don’t have much time for 800 pages of historical romance. Time is hard to come by anymore and short stories are perfect for those with a short attention span or too much to do. I write for you guys.

I tell my tales from Petaluma, a northern California town with 40,000 people and 89 billion kids. I didn’t know when I moved here that it is soccer mom country. I make soccer moms nervous. Maybe it’s my leopard pants? My life is a fountain of marvelous, and when it’s not, I write about it. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll know how to drive a hotdog, how to plant a fake garden and you’ll like NASCAR as much as sex.

No wait a minute, that’s me.

                                                                                         
                                                                                           

Fountain of Marvelous
Honors and Awards

Winner of the Mildred Bundimple Literary Award

First Place - Crazy Dog Book Medal 2008

Official book of happy people everywhere

 Chuck U. Farley Honorary Mention