My writing projects include the following.
Under contract to be published in 2025: As American As Anyone: The World War II Diary, Letters and Memorabilia of a German Texan and 88th Infantry Officer
Excerpt:
Writing late at night after a day’s battle, could Dad ever have imagined that his daughter would read his thoughts so many years later? Did he somehow know that I would one day pore over the very letters and pictures that he had treasured? As an adult, I read his diary entries and discovered details that confirmed and added to the war stories that he had once told me. I remember as a teenager finding it hard to believe Dad’s story about starving Italians carving slabs of flesh off horses and mules that lay dead in the streets. Years later, I unfolded a yellowed and worn letter that my father had sent from Italy mentioning seeing this very sight. Many of Dad’s letters described some of the actual items that he had received from home. In one letter, Dad wrote to Alice, “I’ve caressed that package of Texas dirt that you sent me many a time since I’ve been aboard ship … and I intend to carry it with me as long as I am away from our great state.”
He did carry that dirt-filled envelope with him, and to this day I can hold it in my hand and shake it to hear the dry soil rattling inside. Dad’s words certainly came alive when I first held that very packet, still sealed, still filled with Texas dirt.
All of this memorabilia I discovered many years after my dad had packed it away. Even though my father had told me war stories, I had never seen his actual diary, scrapbooks or letters. My dad was a sentimental man; perhaps it would have been just too painful for him to show them to me himself.
Dad’s story of the war remained for me to discover . . .
Forthcoming: Small Town Mysteries: Lessons in Love and Lies
Excerpt:
There, in a back corner, sat a venerable old trunk. It called to her, a Pandora’s box waiting to be opened.
The trunk’s wood was cracked and its rope handles were frayed. Its metal lock was bent and the domed top barely closed level. The trunk looked long forgotten with a thick layer of dust covering the top.
It would probably be empty, nothing inside. “But how could I not open it and find out for sure?”
“I saw stacks and stacks of papers inside. Some were in notebooks or folders, some were just stapled together.” Others had been held together with rusty old brads. “Many were falling apart,” she told Annie, “and some had brown insect spots on them . . . Yuck.”
Nia gingerly looked through a few, wishing she had gloves on. She noticed that dates had been written on most of them: 1989, 1996, 2001, 2006 and so on. Every year had some writing, and everything had been stored in consecutive order. She thought she recognized her father’s handwriting. “Had Dad kept diaries? Journals? How weird.” Rifling quickly through them, she discovered stories, poems, and lists of names and dates. She didn’t spend much time looking at the occasional photograph – they seemed to be people she didn’t know. Most were women.
Annie broke in, hating to stop Nia, but she had to know. “Did you tell your dad about finding all of this?”
“No way!”
For a number of months – “Oh, half a year, at least” – after first exploring the attic, Nia had occasionally returned, drawn to the trunk. She read random pieces, careful to replace each in the exact order that she had found them. Some journals or bundles of paper revealed stories about Dad’s growing up. Some held romantic poems, she guessed about the mother she had never known. Some had lists of names and dates. For a time, she felt like she was on a treasure hunt.
As the reminiscences’ years progressed, though, some stories took on ominous lives of their own, calling to Nia to peruse their dark pages, coaxing her to make sense of the next story and the next. Their whispers lured her into hidden worlds of their own.
She had never read anything like those.
Forthcoming: Small Town Mysteries: Oh My Gluttony!
Excerpt:
Annie poured a glass of red wine and reflected on the cooking class that had started it all. It was a year ago today. She and her cooking – and sleuthing – partner Early Wilson had been looking forward to learning the secrets to producing the perfect, triple chocolate, multi-layered ganache torte.
Instead, they had opened the kitchen door to a perfect mess. They encountered the grandest triple-weaponed, multi-suspected murder that their small town had ever seen.
They spied bloody, chocolatey footsteps leading to the closed pantry door.