Picture from Pompeii, now in the National Museum of Archeology in Naples.

The Life of an Unintended Writer

I grew up with "family stories." I didn't walk barefoot five miles through the snow to go to school - but my father claims he did. Grandpa Justice spent $35 in the middle of the depression for a hunting hound and it jumped out of the back of the truck, hanging itself before it ever bayed a note in the southern Ohio hills. Grandma Justice didn't talk to him for two years. Great-Great-Grandpa Sullivan fought in the Civil War and gave his grandchildren pennies when they said their ABC's correctly. My mother's people immigrated to Ohio during the early 1800's, raised cattle, and braved the hazards of the Appalachian Mountains to drive them to market in New York. One of my mother's uncles, a hired man and two mules were killed by lightning while plowing. A second uncle, who survived the first disaster, later died from a lightning strike at Pearl Harbor Airfield during World War II.

These stories and many, many more were the stuff of family gatherings - Christmas, Thanksgiving, annual reunions. Five living generations, with the oldest having access to two or three generations before, gave our family a sense of continuity and connection to our country's history. I never tired of hearing the family stories and putting them in the context of the times. My family's fortunes followed the rhythms of war and depression, expansion and persecution, and the natural rhythms of life.

My generation of siblings and cousins produced our share of family stories. Cousin Karen went to college. She was the first but not the last. Another cousin went to prison for possession. He wasn't the last. Our family struggled with prejudice when Cousin Dane brought a "foreign" wife home from the Philippines. And Cousin Rachel chronicled it all, as had Great-Grandma Rachel Ellen in her generation.

I was born into this sprawling, noisy, contentious family with more cousins than I could name and more aunts and uncles than a child could possibly satisfy, pinching my cheeks and criticizing my behavior. But I didn't know any better. I thought all families were like mine, so I grew up generally happy. My childhood was filled with the usual family squabbles, teen angst, disappointments, and triumphs - none of which would lead my parents or three younger siblings to believe I would eventually become a writer.

After serving a stint in the Navy during the Korean War, my dad moved his growing family to the ancestral village to care for his aging parents. Whisler, population 103, is located in South-central Ohio on the boundary between a fertile agricultural plain and the gas and coal rich Hocking Hills. In many ways, it's a village stuck in time. My grandfather's blacksmith shop is gone, but his house is still there. The Prairie View Cemetery with five generations of Justice headstones looks down on Whisler from a low hill. There are some signs of progress. The outdoor privies are all gone, most of the houses sprout satellite TV antennas, and the county put water lines through. The population has even grown. Someone moved a house trailer onto a back lot a few years ago and now the village sign reads "Pop. 111." My parents still live in the gray house on the corner across from the Presbyterian Church.

I grew up roaming the fields, swimming in farm ponds, and hiking the hills. I still had to contend with my brothers and cousins, so I also learned to shoot a fair game of basketball and outrun them on foot or on my bike. But, basically, I was a dreamy child and spent most of my spare time reading about whatever obsession I had at the moment. At various times I read everything I could get my hands on about horses, ancient Egyptians, and Russian literature. I loved history and biography. These were different family stories, but I recognized the passion, the circumstance, and glory of these people.

I also had allies in my pursuits. The Bookmobile ladies knew me and let me into the "adult" stacks long before the other kids. My teachers would occasionally admonish me to put down my book and go out to play, but were generally sympathetic. They kept me busy collecting milk money, typing correspondence, and tutoring younger kids because I would read and memorize my texts the first week of school then get bored. This uncanny ability to remember everything I read lasted until my sophomore year in college where it disappeared in the middle of a biology test.

The first indication that I had any writing ability was when I tested out of all the Freshman English Composition classes at Ohio State University. Reading all those classics must have paid off - or maybe my essay comparing football to the barbarism of Roman gladiatorial games appealed to the pride of misunderstood English professors at a football crazy school. College in the early seventies was an adventure. I joined the usual campus groups, protested, petitioned, and marched while studying to become a teacher. During my student teaching, I realized teaching is HARD WORK and I had no patience when dealing with small children.

Faced with an uncertain future, I did what everyone does in that situation - I applied to graduate school. From there I went to an academic research institute. Ah, the world of publish or perish! I published bibliographies, reviews of literature, curriculum development guides, and research statistical analysis. Most of it was deadly dull, but I did build a bibliography. How many people can say they published five books before they were twenty-five?

From OSU, I moved to Indiana University and met the man who became my husband - a local news producer. After we married, Gordon and I moved to the East Coast to pursue career opportunities - his with CBS News and mine with a series of Fortune 200 companies in need of executive education. Sometime during this period I also hit a streak of poorly written fantasy and SF books - my antidote to the Big Business environment. One day I threw down an inane story and declared - as many had before me - "I can write better than this!"

Of course, I couldn't.

My first effort was a stock fantasy revenge story, which ballooned to 40,000 words. I worked it over and over, read "how-to-write" books, and worked it over again. But I was hooked on fiction writing. I wrote more stories - better each time - and started to send them out. Prominent editors sent me personal rejections. A writer friend-of-a-friend read my stuff and encouraged me to "go to writer's workshop - fast!" I chose the more positive take on this piece of ambiguous advice and assumed she thought I had some talent that a course or workshop might nurture.

I signed up for a course on SF and Fantasy writing with the New School in Manhattan taught by Shawna McCarthy, a former editor at Asimov's. I had the pleasure of announcing to the class my first sale - a short story about a woman who wakes up to find herself transformed into a cat. It took two and a half years after submission before "Cat's Pause" saw print and a year after acceptance before I received $8.20 - which didn't cover the cost of the champagne. But there is nothing in a writer's life quite like the thrill of that very first acceptance letter.

From those humble beginnings my writing career…stalled. In the same month, I got my first acceptance, I found out I was pregnant and I accepted a demanding executive level position with my company. Writing, except for journaling, took a decided back seat during the next few years as I clawed my way up the corporate ladder, balancing a baby and marriage. I did make the wise decision to join the writer's group that formed out of our course. We called ourselves Circles in the Hair (CITH for short - how we got our name is another long story.) This group is almost entirely responsible for any success I have in the writing field. Writer's groups are not for everyone, but these people are my writing lifeline. If I hadn't joined...well...I probably would have earned a whopping $8.20 during my writing career and this web site would be full of family pictures and gossip. So praise or blame them depending on how you like my stuff.

After six years of trying to be superwoman, I gave up the corporate life to concentrate on raising my daughter Hannah and giving birth to a novel. Kids have a wonderful way of focusing you on the important things in life. Hannah was having trouble in school so I decided to teach her at home until I could find the kind of school that could deal with her unique abilities and limitations. Did I mention that teaching is HARD WORK? Every night when Gordon came home, I'd hand off the kid, grab a glass of wine, and try to wrestle my fact-based historical fiction novel into existence. That project preserved my sanity during a trying time.

Way back in 1980 I'd attended a feminist art exhibit called "The Dinner Party" produced by Judy Chicago. One of the "guests" - Hypatia, the Lady Philosopher of Alexandria (b. 355, d. 415) - caught my imagination. I collected books and materials about her life and times for several years. But most of it was sketchy and much of it contradictory. In 1995, a Polish classics scholar named Maria Dzielska came out with an excellent biography, Hypatia of Alexandria. The timing was perfect. I had the material I needed, the time, and the motivation. So I signed up for a novel writing course at the New School (I'm still an academic at heart.) The course didn't do a damn thing for me in terms of teaching me how to write, but it did require me to have five pages every week for four months. That discipline held and I went to Maine with my teacher and several students for a week of writing where I finished the first draft.

The Maine workshop was an annual event for our teacher Lou Stanek and many of her students came every year. Even though this was supposed to be a writer's workshop, there were numerous distractions - breathtaking coastline to explore, midnight swims, gourmet cooking, not to mention interesting people to talk to. The night I worked on the last chapter, Karen and Hugh, my best buddies from the workshop, kept dropping by the living room and asking, "How's it going?" I would absent-mindedly answer, "Nearly there…one more paragraph…I'm on the last sentence…" When I announced "The end!" the entire workshop popped with champagne and we partied. I was surprised, touched, and didn't write another word for the next three days. CITH, Karen and Hugh critiqued my second and third drafts and contributed immensely to the much-improved final product Selene of Alexandria.

Since finishing in late 1998, I've been going through the agonizing experience of trying to find an agent and/or publisher. I read somewhere that publishing required mostly perseverance and a little bit of luck. Here's where the perseverance comes in - over 100 queries in 18 months with mostly "Get an agent" comments from publishers and "Good story, but it's a tight market" comments from agents. The perseverance paid off - recently, a large publisher asked to see the manuscript.

Here's the luck part. Dallas Mayr, a writer friend of CITH's, came to a party, expressed interest in my manuscript, took the time to read all whopping 528 pages and recommended an agent. I sent out a query package with Dallas' name prominent in the first sentence. She didn't work out and Dallas recommended a second person. I sent out another package. The agent asked for the manuscript and offered representation three weeks later. Neither getting an agent nor having a publisher look at the manuscript guarantees a sale, but I'm two steps closer!

At this writing, I've been doing a lot of freelance non-fiction writing (going back to my roots, but with some flare this time), toying with a sequel to Selene and sending out the occasional short story. Fact-based historical fiction is still my favorite (I don't have to come up with a plot.) CITH is going strong, Hannah is in a good school and doing some writing of her own, and Gordon is okay with (mostly) supporting us until my book sells mega-millions. In the meantime, I raise my daughter and try to give birth to a second novel. Did I mention that writing is HARD WORK? It's a good thing I love it!