While married and raising three sons, I developed a career in insurance claims management and administration that lasted for over 25 years. However, during this hectic time, I never gave up my ambition to be a professional writer. This desire was partially met after preparing training manuals for my claims staff and writing articles for insurance trade journals. I have given many speeches and training workshops to workers' compensation insurance and risk management personnel at industry conventions and conferences. However, my true aspiration was to write fiction.
In 1996, I took early retirement from my career as Corporate Manager of Weyerhaeuser Company's workers' compensation program to become a self-employed consultant. The following year I married Donald Lindstedt and joined him in retirement in Cannon Beach, Oregon. I became active in volunteer work that included designing and editing a cookbook, Cooking on the Coast, as a fundraiser for the Cannon Beach Historical Society. I have also been involved in preparing newsletters for two local non-profit organizations
In 2001, I gave myself permission to leave my consulting career and volunteer work behind to pursue my dream of becoming a professional writer. I have published two poems, placed third in Willamette Writer's 2003 Conference for my poem, Ladies of Chedigny, and was a finalist with my short story, Simply to Fly, in the 2004 Northwest Writer's Conference. My first novel, Deception Cove, will be released by Wings e-Press, Inc. in October, 2010.
In 2003, I made a decision to return to college to hone my writing craft. In 2006, at the age of 70, I graduated from Marylhurst University, near Lake Oswego, Oregon, with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Literature and Writing. While a student, I read my paper, "Mrs. Dalloway's Party Consciousness," at the 2005 Virginia Woolf Conference at Lewis and Clark University in Portland, Oregon. In March 2007, I delivered my essay, Shakespeare - Perchance a Woman, at the Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon.
In addition to my three sons, I have nine grand-children, two great-grandsons; three step-children, five step-grandchildren and three step great-grandchildren. Even though this brood loves to visit us at the beach; fortunately, they don't all come at the same time.
