I made it into the world ten minutes before David, my twin brother, and several years before our other brothers and sisters. Ten minutes may not seem like very long, but it was long enough for me to claim firstborn status. Something that David insists is a fluke, but there are no coincidences, are there?

This idea of life events happening at the precise moment they were meant to has been on my mind a lot lately. After scribbling away for years—stealing moments to write after teaching all day—and then coming home to care for my children, when they were young, and later, more often than not, my grandchildren—I managed to write two novels.  Yet the dream of getting closer to publication remained elusive. 

With my current novel, Life After Eleanor, the third time is indeed the charm. Beyond ecstatic to have Jill Marr as my literary agent, I celebrated the signing of my contract with the Sandra Dijkstra Agency by waving the contract about as a badge of honor.

“This is proof,” I informed my family, which has long regarded my writing more as a hobby than an avocation—and really, after so many years, who can blame them?—“that I am not a crazy woman!”

Unless you count my being crazy excited to introduce to you, dear reader, my novel about Eleanor Roosevelt staging her death to run off to San Francisco with her lover, Lorena Hickok. A tale inspired by my asking, what if? A question that has often popped up in my writing life. Over the years, there have been times when I’ve wondered, what if I simply gave up? Set the dream free, like a balloon released into the sky? Watched my hope of one day seeing my words in print float off to wherever it is that novels in the drawer go to die? Thank goodness I didn’t! Just as I was meant to be born ten minutes before my twin, now is the time for my still to be published novel, Life After Eleanor, as well as my forthcoming memoir, A Remnant of a Shattered Vase, to enter the world.