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Forget Clark Kent, Lois Lane had it all together. She could write circles around Jimmy Olsen, had great suits/shoes/hats and talked back to Perry White. As an adult I recognized that she did occasionally overdo the damsel in distress thing and who really couldn't see the resemblance between Clark and her true love? ... but when I was a kid -- Lois rocked.
As soon as I got my first typewriter in second grade, I commandeered a mimeograph machine to start my first newspaper. Subsequent papers resurfaced in both Junior and Senior high with decidedly different content, but the same ditto smell and stencils laden with correction fluid. The good journalism professors at St. Bonaventure University in the Enchanted Mountains of Olean, New York eventually taught me how to do it right. Graduating to real life and a Mac IIvx , I started and sold two more newspapers as an adult (trade papers dealing with horse racing and real estate) after having a ball at real daily newspapers in Buffalo NY, San Antonio TX and Houston TX.
Of course newspaper didn't turn out to be a growth industry, particularly for a single mom with an excellent, but expensive. daughter. I bounced back and forth between the alluring (newspaper) and the practical (marketing and public relations) for almost 15 years before settling permanently and happily on the PR side of the equation.
An exceptional run of luck brought me a new husband (complete with a second magnificent daughter), a happenstance opportunity to work for five years at a Five Star Five Diamond island resort and eventually the chance to start writing again. I finished a book and a half, signed with an agent ... and put the whole thing on the shelf in order to move back to my native Buffalo seven years ago.
For the last few years I have been self-employed, enjoying the luxury of choosing a small group of clients. I no longer get to use to power of the press to, as Twain said, "comfort the afflicted and comfort the afflicted" but I am fortunate to work with people who make a difference in the community I love.
My husband, Charlie, and I look forward to living between Houston in the winter and Buffalo in the summer -- because the other way around would be ridiculous.
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