About me (aka, Where I’ve been)

Rather than a traditional, conforming resume or CV, I’d like to share with you how I started my journey as a freelance writer and editor.

I studied journalism at the University of Delaware and, long before Comcast Sports’ Leslie Gudel, Dei Lynam, and Amy Fodool, I dreamed of reporting about Philadelphia’s professional sports. Sadly, my assignments leaned towards writing police reports and obituaries. Only temporarily stymied, I accepted a teaching assistant position at KidsPeace and education hooked meDSC_0127.

One M.Ed. in Curriculum Planning and Development from Lehigh University later, I moved to Kansas, taught various writing, public speaking, introduction to the Internet, and literature classes to soldiers and their dependents at Ft. Riley. When my husband deployed, I also started training horses (sadly, not to write). Kansas State’s Creative Writing M.A. program piqued my interest about the time J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released in paperback.

I wrote (and wrote) voluminous quantities of non-fiction, poetry, and tech documents to earn an M.A. from K State in Creative Writing – non-fiction. Full immersion into the word world solidified my love of words and language.

Fast-forward to 2000 and a return to Pennsylvania and a Bucks County high school who hired me to teach English and Latin.

I spent 13 years teaching at Pennridge, convincing students that Shakespeare really did write relevant stories of lust, murder, and betrayal – not unlike the evening news – and proving to students that knowing a dead language improved SAT scores, upped the “nerd factor”- in a good way – when playing Age of Empires, Operation Lapis, Dante’s Inferno, SimCity and Civilization, and provided interesting conversation material for discussing war tactics, civilization-building, the US government, and astrology.

In June 2013, I chose to leave the high school to teach Creative Non-Fiction Writing at Cedar Crest College, in Allentown, PA. I’ve designed and taught Intro to Professional Writing, Writing for the Web, Intro to Poetry Writing, and a whole host of other creative and business-type courses.

In addition to editing thousands of papers (maybe a tad hyperbole), encouraging the correct use of commas, and suggesting all passive voice verbs be used as often as arsenic, I have

  • written and edited content for Pro Web Concepts, Inc. – www.ProWebConcepts.com
  • written and edited a quarterly newsletter for the Pennsylvania Classical Association
  • written a weekly column on motherhood and life as a working mother for Patch.com

Currently, I’m also a freelance reporter and photographer for the Bethlehem Press, a local weekly paper and I’m collaborating with a team at EPAM to revise and rewrite the entire website content for two branches of a very large utility company in NJ and Long Island.

Additionally, I joined up with an online resume writing company, and I’ve worked with over 900 clients to create resumes, cover letters, CVs, and LinkedIn profiles.

My sci-fi/ fantasy convention and fashion world ties have also reignited my photography freelancing, so once again, I’m shooting sports and other events, sci-fi/ fantasy conventions, art museum events, people and animal portraits, and the occasional nature scene.