The road less traveled has a lot to recommend it. 

But it was the “path completely unexpected” that really shook things up for me a few years ago, and finally let me put the word “author” at the end of a string of channel markers that include working as a waitress at a truck stop, a criminal prosecutor, a judicial clerk, and a radio talk show host. 

I’ve quit trying to plan anything out in life anymore, opting for the “carpe diem” school of thought on a day-to-day basis. Starting the day with no solid expectations other than to keep putting one foot in front of the other without tripping on my shoes has a way of letting some of the most gloriously serendipitous things unfold. 

Which is precisely how my collection of essays, “Running with Stilettos” made it into print, followed by “Heck on Heels.” Which was preceded by a website designed primarily to keep me writing so the top of my head didn’t fly off from the pressure of unwritten words. Which was preceded by going law school, which in turn was kicked off by a riding accident that put me in a body cast for several months, but…

I like to say that one of the things that defines us as persons, that stakes out what we’re made of, is revealed by how we react to opportunity’s knock. Sometimes it’s a very loud knock, sometimes a tiny rapping barely audible over the wind blowing through the trees outside.

In my case, for this particular story I’d start charting the journey at the point when I had my fourth child (who is now in college) and decided to give up a successful run as a freelancer writing about public television in favor of keeping the trains running on time for a brood that included a husband, four kids under the age of ten, a dog, and two horses. Really, I thought, I’d had a great career, I could stand to take a few years off from writing and focus on motherhood. 

It’s not like I didn’t have my hands full. Writing up to that point was something I’d shoehorned for years into my days as a soccer mom when the older kids were off at school and the youngest was napping or at preschool. Two hours a day, tops. And not on most weekends. The FedEx driver might have been such a fixture at my address that she sometimes brought toys for my kids, but writing still always took a backseat to the immediacy of motherhood, that universal and constant demand to keep the kids safe and warm and fed and delivered to their after-school activities on time. With a pan of lasagna or cookies or a cheesecake if a potluck dinner was involved.

It wasn’t until three years later that I started to feel the longing to put words on paper again, and when it was time for the youngest to start a preschool class of his own, I picked up a fountain pen and a legal pad. I’d walked away from the public television market secure in the knowledge that I’d interviewed about everybody I possibly could ever want to, so this time, curled up in a corner of the living room sofa, I began to write a suspense novel. In longhand. I’d never tried to write fiction before, but after the initial growing pains involved with taking a small idea and making it bigger (unlike magazine writing, which involved taking a large subject and condensing it), the words started to flow.

No, that’s entirely too tame a description. The feeling of euphoria and relief that swept over me was akin to being held under water to the point of drowning, and finally being able to break the surface. Glory halleluia, I had oxygen again!! I hadn’t even known I was drowning.

A year went by as the chapters grew and my marriage simultaneously began to unravel, and finally I had a manuscript ready to send out into the world. Looking at it now, I hold my nose in places and think that in others, the words still absolutely sing, but at the time, I couldn’t wait to start testing the waters.