I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. It all started when my brother taught me how to plunk out each letter of the alphabet on his Smith-Corona typewriter.

These days I plunk out my ideas on the screen and in the many fancy notebooks I lovingly hoard.

I’ve been coaching and mentoring in one form or another for more than twenty-five years. I love - LOVE! - working with writers, whether it’s the many hundreds of students I’ve taught as a college professor or the incredible writers I’ve coached since I became an Author Accelerator-certified book coach (fiction and memoir).

My own writing life is busy, which is just how I like it! I write fiction, primarily mystery and historical. And I’m currently knee-deep in the drafting of a research-intensive family memoir that focuses on life in the 1930s Midwest. As a communication professor at the University of Illinois, I’ve published three non-fiction books of photography history and won a few awards along the way.

It’s always been important to me to share my ideas with audiences outside of academia. For example, I recently published a guest essay in the New York Times, appeared in a BBC radio documentary, and served as an on-camera expert in a PBS documentary.

As an academic who writes non-academic stories, I know firsthand the joys and challenges of changing lanes and coming into new ways of thinking about myself as a writer. I became a book coach because I wanted to bring my curiosity, empathy, and expertise to other writers like you - academics who yearn to change lanes.

When I’m not writing, coaching, or professoring, I run, read (of course), spend time in the woods, experiment with film photography, and hang out with my spouse and pets. I have a strange obsession with stories about art crime. And I will read literally any book that’s based in the world of Jane Austen - especially murder mysteries.

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