It all started more than fifty years ago when for the first time in my life I voluntarily put pen to paper. No forced school assignment, no obligatory thank you note for something I didn’t want for my birthday: just me, a pen, a piece of paper, and an idea. This eleven-year-old me was going to write family stories and personal thoughts in the same lyrical prose style that John-Boy Walton, of the influential TV series The Waltons, did in his journal.

Over the ensuing years I never captured John-Boy’s style of writing, as his style was never mine to have.  Nonetheless, John-Boy’s character helped fuel an unquenchable desire in me from that early age to write, eventually filling volumes of notebooks with family history, descriptions of life’s events, thoughts, travel writing, and personal essays.

I consider February 1993 as the date I became a published writer. A few months earlier, I had sent a personal essay to the editor of The Beacon, the monthly newsletter of Boston Mensa. The editor liked it and published it in the February issue. Since then, I have been published in many magazines, most notably Highlights for Children (2004-2014 as a freelance science writer), Nature Friend (2002-2007 before they went full-out fundamentalist), and lots of technical mumbo jumbo for professional newsletters, journals, and webpages dealing with environmental challenges in the water and wastewater fields. Other notables include Yankee Magazine, Boston Magazine, Birds & Bloom, Pack-O-Fun, and Penny Press Publications.

I am a retired environmental chemist and live in Central Massachusetts with my chive plant (a renewable resource for my home-made bacon-cheddar-chive scones). It doesn’t get much simpler than that.