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About Author

I don’t think I ever made a decision to be a writer. It is something I’ve always done. During much of my life, this happened during stolen moments or sleepless nights. Often, it happened with a yellow scratch pad on my lap while being jostled around on some Chicago ‘L’ train, or sitting on a bench waiting for a bus. Most of my life, it has been something like an obsession. If I were to stack my yellow scratch pads in a pile, I’d call the entire collection “The Lamentations of Just Judy”. I had a lot of grievances about my youth. Sometimes I titled these scratch pads, “Working it out with Words.”

I was thirty-ish when I was first introduced to the Mormon elders. My husband had been raised a Catholic and I, a Lutheran. I loved the structure and the purpose I found and the change in lifestyle, and there were many activities for myself and my family. Yet, I often felt conflicted with the two theologies. My husband had no conflict. He went to Sunday meetings, genuflected and made the sign of the cross. He had converted, but he was still Catholic.

This was my turmoil: Life is eternal progression, a spirit world exists simultaneously with us, Jesus is our elder brother, and once God was also a man. Top that off with the Godhead being three separate personages–I loved practicing the Mormon faith, but the theology was somewhat like fairy tales.

I’ve always been an avid reader: James Michener, Irving Stone, Leon Uris, etc.
Biographical historical fiction has long been my favorite, but I never had a life I wanted to write about until after I came to know Joseph Smith. Was it the man, or the inconsistencies between his plan and the one I was taught in my youth? I lived a life with internal conflict. I could not see my way out.

I was introduced to Jerald and Sandra Tanner. These stalwart individuals ran a microfilm company determined to save and share much of the factual documentation around the life of Joseph Smith and the founding of the Mormon faith. As I became informed, I discarded my belief system and exchanged it for knowledge acquired from history. Ten plus years later, I published my first book: “Holy Joe! Prophet, Seer, and Revelator.”

I quit writing for twelve years after the first publication. The reasons for that choice are relative to my life at that time. I have taken up my pen again. The book reports and placeholders posted on this website are written in preparation for another book. It’s a way of sharing with my readers the ongoing process. The working title is Nefarious Elders and Long-suffering Saints.
My plan is to read and highlight a book a week, and also to sift through the pages and find my report. A book a week for two years is what I project, and then another year (or whatever it takes) to write a gripping, historically accurate frontier fiction. On this road, there are many stories to tell.

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The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug. -Mark Twain

Newsletter

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

W. Somerset Maugham