About Me

      I was born in Pasadena, California. at the age of twelve I moved to Las Vegas, Nevada where I more or less remained until I was an adult.  The move at twelve was a somewhat traumatic one for me, as I was raised in quite a sheltered environment. Once i had adjusted, however, i understood a great passion for traveling which has been with me ever since.

      Since then, I have lived and traveled in France, Great Britain, Sweden, and (thanks to my partner, Mika, whom I met while attending university in Las Vegas) Finland, where I lived, worked, and attended school for about three years.

      In 2017, my mother had a massive stroke and I returned to the US from Finland to handle her affairs. She now lives with Mika and me in our new home in Montana where my family works in shifts giving her care.

      It was during this time of change in my mother's health that all the pieces came together in my writing life. I've always been an avid reader and have been writing stories since the age of fifteen - a few novels and shorter stories which will never see the light of day. After the stroke my lifelong passion for Jane Austen became a kind of refuge for me and I began working on Hugh. 

      Now a confession: I do almost all of my reading via audiobooks (I refuse to say I consume novels on audio, it does (fittingly) make me gag) and one of the treasures of my reading life are old recordings of Jane Austen's works by an American narrator, Flo Gibson. Perhaps it is because these recordings were all that were available in my library growing up, and they were the first to open me to Austen, but I simply adore them.

      Yet it is a confession because, when it comes to British literature, I feel I should be devoted to British narrators. On the whole, I greatly prefer British narration to American, unless we are talking about William Faulkner etc. Over the years, I have listened to countless British narrators performing Austen's works, and, with the exception of Donada Peters/Nadia May reading Emma, I haven't found one I like as much as my friend Flo.

      The energy and tone established in Flo's narrations created a world in my head which I've never wanted to leave, and it is in this world that my writing has taken shape. It's where I wrote Hugh and Billy, and where I go for inspiration on my newer projects. My finished product bears little resemblance to Jane Austen, but she is almost always the starting point. 

 

DL