tHESE aRE tHE rULES

There are rules I can make for myself or choose to follow willingly.

• My head goes where my body goes.
• Read a poem every morning
• A writer doesn’t have to write every day but a writer has to notice every day.
• Speak quietly from my heart with love to all creatures
• Rest when I am tired
• Save my own life
• Tell the truth as I believe it
• Listen more than I talk
• Stick with the winners. I become the people around me. And the corollary:
• Choose teachers wisely and choose wise teachers.
• Hold onto my dreams – and let them take me into and out of the labyrinth.

And there are the rules the publishing industry makes. Those rules are about genre and query letters and 30 second commercials and the synopsis. None of their rules are my rules but I will follow them if it means my book will be published.

I am proposing a multi-generational novel titled Pungo Creek of 52,000 words which is complete.

Following the murder of her father, 9 year old Clara finds herself on Pungo Creek in an old house shared with her Great Aunt Sarah, her mother Rose and her younger sister Ivy. Rose sinks into alcoholism and is unable to shield her daughters from the volatile tempers, destructive behavior, incest and bleakness that have permeated the lives of the women of Pungo Creek for generations. Their grandmother silently endured her husband’s rage. Her Uncle Benjamin molested his sister Pearl. When her cousin Kate is raped and murdered by her own brother –the same person who is assaulting Clara - the defenseless girl, having no refuge and no protector, makes a horrific choice.

Clara drowns herself to escape the cycle.

My work has appeared in Photo District News, Washingtonian Magazine, Solutions and Rough Notes. I founded InPrint Magazine, a magazine for professional photographers, for which I was honored with the Federal Photographers Award for Excellence. I am an active member of the International Women’s Writing Guild and the National Writers Union. Pungo Creek, my first novel, was inspired by my own childhood in rural North Carolina where I lived in a house shared by three generations.

I have a synopsis, character sketches and sample chapters ready to send you.

It doesn’t matter that the query letter makes the book sound flat and lifeless. Those are the rules.