Creative exploration and building community are the backbone of most everything I do.

The first half of my career, I was creative director for a company my first husband and I started, Merwin Creative in Seattle. I wrote and designed corporate and environmental public awareness films and other media.

For the second chapter, I started to find myself by running La Finca Caribe, a well-loved inn and neverneverland for offbeat eco-travelers like myself on Puerto Rico’s Vieques Island. I even figured out how to interweave writing and innkeeping with a blog that later became my book.

My book — La Finca — focuses on the 24 years I was tending that magic place that doesn't exist anymore. Life was very sweet for a while before Hurricane Maria blew it all away. 

I’ve been married, divorced, remarried, and widowed.  I’m the daughter of a rodeo-riding cowboy and Morman turned beatnik freethinking mom. I’ve raised my own three self-actualized critical-thinking adults, and done a fair amount of therapy. I’ve made it big and lost it all — a couple of times now. I think I’ve been humbled. My readers often refer to my vulnerability. 

For what it’s worth, I’ve also had a gelato & post card shop in Seattle, a small sheep farm on Marrowstone Island, helped start KSKA Anchorage public radio, managed corporate sustainability for a major online retailer, cleaned houses, and was an au pair on the French Riviera when I was 18.

I have lived and loved a lot I guess. And usually on the road less traveled. Better yet, on no road at all.

My work — whether in marketing, film, carbon reduction programs or dedicated eco-tourism — has won a whole bunch of various national and international awards. It’s been mentioned in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, China's People Daily, the Seattle Times, the San Juan Star, Gourmet, Outside and Lonely Planet.

While maybe that sounds fancy, I've learned most of that doesn't mean very much.

In the last few years in my late 60s, I've learned to jump on and crew on boats in Maine, Mexico, and the BC coast. Recently I've been first mate in training on a science research vessel in Southeast Alaska.

Throughout it all — the travels, adventures in love and life, the heartbreaks, risk-taking; and even the wildly successful endeavors, creative and spiritual discovery and expression — have served as the foundation or framework for it all. Building deep connection — with my soul, the planet, and the people on it — is the reward. 

I love to write, yet I’ve found publishing and its inherent marketing process challenging at best. I don't care much for social media, but that’s the necessary evil marketplace authors have to land and fend for themselves. Nonetheless, writing serves as my daily sudoku and is the best tool I have for building connection.

Feedback from readers is the spark that keeps me going.

So if any of this resonates with you, hop on board. Let me know you're out there. I've always loved to make friends. It might be a simple as that.  

PS. I never went to high school so — if you read my work long enough, you are likely to come across some interesting grammar choices or sentence constructs. Forgiven and acceptance are beautiful attributes.