I grew up an only child in suburban Westchester County New York. My first real time away from home was the four years I spent at Ursinus College, a small co-ed school in Pennsylvania. My major was French, but it really should have been English. I didn’t select English, though, because it carried a required minor in History. That subject and I had never gotten along well, and in the foolishness of youth, I didn’t want to have any more to do with History than I had to, a decision I have regretted often in adulthood. Luckily my husband had always been an avid student of History, can probably name every Civil War general on both sides and what they accomplished, as well as all the European kings and the wars they began, and has filled in the myriad blank spaces in my knowledge of the world.
In the many years I spent in marketing and advertising, writing was an integral part of my work. Proposals, media plans, marketing rationales, all depended upon the correct use of, and persuasive aspects of words.
We moved to Miami, Florida in 1980 and lived for three years on our sailboat “Rebellion”.
Tired of having all my clothes for work fit in eighteen inches of locker space, we bought a waterfront condo. A couple of years later, I became publisher of a regional trade magazine serving the homebuilding industry. There I wrote feature stories of industry leaders, and addressed the topics of concern, especially after 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, which forced a major change in building codes.
After a move to St. Augustine in 1997, I decided to put my Real Estate license to work. I’d had the license for some years, and now had the opportunity to work for a custom home builder. It was a small company and gave me the opportunity to learn something about the building process.
During my free time, I once again began writing – not the business papers of the past, but fiction. And not just fiction, but murder mysteries. There are a couple of completed novels just waiting to be edited and cleaned up, while biding their time on the hard drive of my computer.
There have been several of my short stories which have been published in anthologies, including seven times in the Florida Writer’s Association’s annual Collections. I also am collaborating with another author on a mystery series set here in St. Augustine. I belong to the Mystery Writers of American, the Florida Writers Association and Sisters-in-Crime.
They say you write what you know. Which is why I decided to write about a Real Estate agent as the protagonist of my novels. Think about it. That agent has access to your home, your immediate family, learns about your hopes and dreams, knows something about your financial status, and seeks out people who may want to buy or sell. A sense of curiosity is also very helpful. Makes for a good snoop, doesn’t it?
So, my Angela Rossi was born at the age of forty-three, divorced with two adult children, possessing a Florida Real Estate license and a strong sense of loyalty to family. She tries to hide her libido, sometimes has a little too much to drink, but works hard to provide a future for herself in the fictional Florida town of San Rafael.You’ll learn more about her in my first novel A House To Die For.