In my daytime job, I was an investigator, working cases that ranged from fraud to wrongful death—a woman in a predominantly male world. It was about that time that I was fortunate enough to be assigned to an investigation in the upper middle peninsula of Virginia. I began to find contacts and obtain details—such as my reference in the novel to several of the old “railways” used for pulling boats out of the water for repair or families on the shore that made crab pots. The area was rich in history and, often, its people were open to talk about it. I met several well-established families (with lineages to the settlers) and was invited to events that further contributed to my fact finding missions. ...

Years had passed. Still, the writing muse found me, again. It is true what you’ve heard—that is, when it’s in your blood, you feel it. Everything around me kept pointing me back to writing, even a lunchtime show on National Public Radio (NPR) about a keen writers camp held on a spit of land known to most in the local region as the Outer Banks of North Carolina, on Ocracoke Island.   

Ocracoke was a short drive from where I lived in Virginia, so I signed up. ...

My eighth grade English teacher turned to me in the last week of school before summer break and said, “Why don’t you write a book this summer.” She’d obviously observed my love of literature and of writing—scores of short stories written and submitted as a part of class—and, perhaps, thought I’d be pleased and possibly inspired.  So, as any good military brat would do, I did write a book. Thank you, to Ms. Hall from Bayside Junior High School.  That summer, I crafted my first novel with pencil and wide-lined paper (typewriters were expensive, hard to come by—even if I could learn to use one). By summer’s end, I had one hundred pages—a fine novel.