• Travel

    A Weekend Itinerary for Charleston, S.C.

    My husband Daniel and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary last month. Originally, we had big plans to finally get away somewhere tropical for this milestone and had settled on St. Lucia. Then COVID-19 hit, the resort shut down and we were unable get on an airplane this summer. We put off the trip and decided to do something a…

  • True Crime

    The Murder of Grace Brown

    Does the ghost of Grace Brown haunt the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York? The murder of this young woman was a scandal that rocked the country in the early 1900s. Grace, who hailed from Chenango County, met Chester Gillette while working at a skirt factory his family owned. She was immediately taken with the attractive and athletic young man…

  • freelance writing,  Lifestyle

    Writing Rituals

    Writers sometimes talk about writing rituals. While I can’t say I have that many besides grinding away at deadlines, I do have a few post-deadline rituals I thought I’d share. Since April of this year, I’ve been editing two monthly magazines. Both go to the printer around the same time, causing a whole lot of frenzy on my part about…

  • True Crime

    The Horrific Crimes of Lesley Eugene Warren

    He was incredibly young and he had the face to match. But underneath his youthful demeanor lay  the heart of a killer. Lesley Eugene Warren murdered four women in three different states before finally being apprehended in July 1990. Although this all took place in my home state of North Carolina, I somehow had never heard of the man until…

  • Lifestyle

    This Time Last Year

    From the August 2020 issue of Lake Norman CURRENTS. This time last year I was returning from a vacation in Florida, about a month into working this job, scheduling meetings, helping my daughter pack for a weeklong sleepaway camp and making a list of which school supplies I should pick up at what store. There were also a few afternoons…

  • Lifestyle

    The Not-So-Secret Life of Pets

    I don’t like to think about what my life would be like without my pets. I’ve had a dog for as long as I can remember, and most of them have been pretty small. I guess as a petite person myself I’m hesitant to get a pet that could potentially be taller than me while standing on hind legs. My…