Announcing the 2015 Reader Survey

Writers and readers – a symbiotic relationship. Ideas spark writers to create stories and build worlds and characters for readers’ consumption. Readers add imagination and thought along with their backgrounds and attitudes to interpret those stories, deriving meaning and enjoyment in the process. A story is incomplete without both writer and reader.

 

What then do readers want? What constitutes a compelling story? How do men and women differ in their preferences? Where do readers find recommendations? What are their attitudes to pricing or their favourite reading blogs? These and other questions have been the subject of two previous reader surveys.

 

ANNOUNCING A 2015 READER SURVEY designed to solicit further input on reading habits, historical fiction preferences, favourite authors and, for the first time, favourite historical fiction. THE SURVEY WILL BE OPEN UNTIL MAY 14.

 

If you are a reader or a writer, please take the survey and share the link [https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GXRD9B7] with friends and family and on your favourite social media. Robust participation across age groups, countries, and other demographics will make this year’s survey even more significant. Those who take the survey will be able to sign up to receive a summary report when it becomes available.

 

Highlights from prior surveys:

•         HISTORICAL FICTION IS MAINSTREAM: Less than 2% of participants said they rarely or never read historical fiction.

•         GENDER MAKES A DIFFERENCE: Women and men differ significantly in their reading habits and preferences and their views of historical fiction.

•         AGE MAKES A DIFFERENCE: Those under 30 have different preferences for genre and time period 
and have different patterns of consumption and acquisition.

•         SOCIAL MEDIA IS HAVING A BIG IMPACT ON READING: Social media and online sites play an increasingly significant role for those choosing, purchasing, and talking about fiction.

•         BOOK BLOGS ARE VERY POPULAR: 1,473 participants listed one, two or three favourite blogs.

•         GEOGRAPHY: Responses to questions such as the use of online tools for recommendations and purchasing and preferred setting for historical fiction varied by geography.

•         PRICING: Sadly, readers are pushing for low prices. For example, 60% want e-books at $5.99 or less and 66% want paperbacks at $10.99 or less.

•         ONLINE BOOK CLUBS ARE GAINING POPULARITY: 21% belong to online clubs while 15% belong to clubs meeting in a physical location

•         VOLUME OF BOOKS READ MAKES A DIFFERENCE: for example, high volume readers have different expectations for book reviews, a higher interest in tracking their books, and higher usage of online tools and social media to augment their reading experience.

 

Participate in this year’s survey by clicking the link and please share the URL with others https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GXRD9B7.

 

M.K. Tod writes historical fiction and blogs about all aspects of the genre at A Writer of History. Her latest novel, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE is set in WWI France and is available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. Her debut novel, UNRAVELLED: Two wars. Two affairs. One marriage. is also available from these retailers.

Mary can be contacted on Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

GEEK HISTORY...D.C. COMICS

Hi there and thank you for allowing me a chance to share a bit of geek history with you today. My name is Toi Thomas and I’ll be filling you in on the basics of Batman. The history of D.C. Comic’s Batman is a long and complicated tale, but I’m going to sum it up in 10 basic points.

Wikipedia

1. The Batman character wasn’t created as a show stopper. He was just another character in the Detective Comics series called “the bat-man”, created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger.

2. His first appearance of Detective Comic issue 27.

3. His famous origin story didn’t appear until issue 33.

4. In issue 38, Robin made his first appearance as a kind of kid-Watson to Batman’s-Holmes.

Wikipedia

5. The actual comic book title Batman didn’t appear until 1940.

6. Catwoman and Joker didn’t appear until issue #1 of the Batman title.

7. In the beginning, Batman carried and used a gun. This was later changed when writers decided that a boy who watched his parents get shot may not like guns.

8. The 1960s TV show was a decline in Batman detective creativity, but was a boost in popularity and resulted in several new villains. (It was inspired by a Hollywood costume party.)

9. Batman was one of the first and still few superheroes without any super powers.



Wikipedia

 

10. In recent years and current D.C. history, the Batman characters has had more character and story cross-overs than any other character and has received the most commercial success outside the comic book press, with Superman being his closet competition.

Now you may be wondering why the need for a brief history of Batman. So, I’ll give you 3 reasons.

1. Batman is my favorite superhero of all time.

2. The story and many aspects of this character have inspired details of my Eternal Curse Series.

Eternal Curse Series

3. Like Batman, other characters of the D.C. Universe have inspired my writing, specifically my Eternal Curse series and I even made a video about it. Watch it here.

.

A self-proclaimed techie and foodie, Toi Thomas was born in Texas, but considers Virginia to be home. She enjoys reading, cooking, baking, painting, collecting vinyl records, and spending time with her family. Currently working as a special education teacher’s assistant while blogging and writing fulltime, Toi finds comfort and peace of mind in chocolate, green tea, and naps. For some reason, Toi admits has escaped her, she married a frat boy who has continued to be her best friend and love of her life. She and her husband are now tackling video production and Comicons to promote the release of her second novel, Eternal Curse: Battleground. Visit The ToiBox of Words to learn more about Toi and her writing. 

Facebook | Twitter  | Google+ | Pinterest | You Tube

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That’s all I have for today. I do hope you have enjoyed the visit and will maybe consider picking up a copy of a Batman comic book and perhaps even a copy of my Eternal Curse Series. 

HISTORY and HUMOR by Carol E. Wyer Humorous Novelist/Blogger

Laugh now, cry later – Erma Bombeck

 

Laughter is the most powerful weapon in our arsenal and I have written at length about the benefits of laughter: 

 Huffingtonpost~Carol Wyer

 

Indeed my day is not complete unless I have made at least ten people laugh. Why? I don’t know. I guess I’m addicted to laughter and to seeing people giggle. It’s one of the reasons I took up writing but I wasn’t the first person by any means to write humour or to tell jokes.

 

People have been writing jokes and telling funny stories for centuries. I was astonished to discover even the Victorians, who I consider to be a pooh-faced bunch told marvellous jokes: What is the difference between a tube and a foolish Dutchman? One is a hollow cylinder and the other a silly Hollander. –

(See more at: Historytoday.com ~ Best Victorian Jokes )

 

 

I researched the history of laughter and humour before I set about my new challenge as a stand-up comic and it is fascinating but too lengthy to document here in one post. There are many who should be credited for this form of entertainment, including the Greeks and Plato, and a virtual saunter around the internet will provide you with much information. The earliest known joke is set some way back in time—back to 1600 BC if my sources are accurate. The joke was a bawdy one—they all were to start with—and involved a Pharaoh, some women and a fishing line. I’m not sure how it went but I guess you could look it up.

 

As people travelled so too did humour. The bedrock of British humour, sarcasm for instance, was actually brought to the UK by the Vikings, typically noted for raping and pillaging throughout history, when they brought trade from across the world to British shores. Sarcasm, irony and understatement are part of the “common heritage” between Denmark and the UK. There are traces in comic tales used in the later Old Norse sagas, such as Orkneyinga Saga where an Earl goes out disguised as a fisherman, to help a farmer.

These sagas, largely from the thirteenth century and known for their “laconic humour, detail examples of comedy in the face of adversity, and also contain the roots of some Danish and English words showing more similarities in how we communicate.

 

Humour has been attributed to many story-tellers and writers such as Chaucer whose Canterbury Tales written and unfinished in the late fourteenth century is full of wholesome bawdy humour but it is Shakespeare who gets the prize for the first knock knock joke. It occurs in Macbeth, just after the scene in which King Duncan is slain by Macbeth and his wife. Shakespeare juxtaposes the horror of the murder with an amusing scene involving a gatekeeper. “Knock, knock, knock. Who’s there I’ the name of Beelzebub? Here’s a farmer hanged himself on the expectation of plenty. Have napkins enough about you. Here you’ll need them.”… Okay, you and I might not “get” the humour there but trust me when I say an Elizabethan audience would have been chortling merrily at it.

 

Knock knock jokes are not as puerile or childish as you might think. The first documented one was in 1934.

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Rufus

Rufus who?

Rufus the most important part of the house.

Since then, they have become more sophisticated and now are conduits for other forms of humour such as anti-jokes, puns, the new interrupting knock knock joke, the reverse knock knock joke and so on. I’ll spare you my routine at this point.

 

Humour developed from bawdy into the more sophisticated forms we enjoy today. The British are considered to have an advanced sense of humour. I suppose due to the fact we are stuck on a windy, grey island full of potholes, we have to find something to alleviate the situation. However, not all nationalities share the same sense of humour. For instance, what a Brit might find amusing, an American might not. (Although, in my opinion, we both seem to like puns and Monty Python.) The French do not in general, have the same sense of humour as us, as I discovered when I gave a talk to an ex-pat group in France. Little did I know that secreted in the audience were several French teachers who had dropped by to learn about humour in writing. After the talk, one of them came up to me and said, “Eet was a verrey good talk but I did not understand your first joke. What do you call a Frenchman in sandals? Philippe Fellop!” I had trouble explaining it to him.

 

Many jokes are at the expense of others. The French love jokes about the Belgians as do the Dutch and people from Luxembourg. For the British that would be like telling jokes about the Irish or for our friends across the pond, jokes about Bubba. There is a famous joke about a Belgian truck driver getting stuck under a bridge. I told it at a dinner party in France to gales of laughter yet the same joke fell flat on a UK tour. On the other hand, that same UK audience laughed like mad at the joke about Paddy and Mick in an aeroplane: Paddy says to Mick, “If the plane goes upside down, will we fall out?”

“No,” says Paddy, “We’ll still be friends.”

In Norway, Denmark and Finland they laugh at the Swedes and vice versa. Jokes about Dutch people being tight-fisted or scrooge-like with money tend to be similar to jokes we tell about the Scots.

 

My own love affair with laughter and humour began many years ago. A child of the seventies, it appears I was born in the right decade. Evidence points to the fact anyone who was a child in the seventies is more likely to be light-hearted and enjoy a laugh. The 1970s were the golden age of sit-coms and comedy on radio and television and as a young person, I recall watching endless comedy and entertainment shows.

 

From story telling to literature, art, music, radio and television, humour has played a part in our lives, releasing tension and helping us to feel better about ourselves. It will continue to develop, dependent on sociological views and individual, reflecting our feelings and views about life and provide that necessary antidote to life with its woes. So, if you are feeling down, drag out an old comedy DVD or sing along to Always Look On The Bright Side of Life. You’ll feel a lot better.

 

Carol E. Wyer

 

Humorous Novelist/Blogger 

"A laugh every turn of the page"

 

Signed author with Safkhet Publishing 

 

Blogger for Huffington Post

 

 

www.carolewyer.co.uk

 

 

www.facing50withhumour.com

 

 

www.grumpyoldmenopause.com

 

 

Michael McCormick, Vietnam and Me

My work is mostly about the Vietnam war. My novella, Across The Pond by Michael McCormick, deals with the trials and tribulations encountered by Vietnam veterans, both during and after the Vietnam war. The United States sent it’s young men into battle in Southeast Asia, used them once and then threw them away. 

The war itself was particularly brutal, especially during the Tet Offensive of 1968, in Hue and along the DMZ, in the northern part of South Vietnam. More bombs were dropped on Vietnam during the war than were dropped in all of World War II. It is estimated that between one and three million Vietnamese died. Fifty thousand young American’s died. 

After all this carnage, when the Vietnam veterans returned home, they were treated very badly. The U.S. Government, the American people and the very society that sent them to war in the first place scape-goated the veterans. They were blamed for the whole mess, cast out, ridiculed, called suckers and rejected. This is me during the war, second from left.

 

 

Across The Pond by Michael McCormick is the story of a young American who fights for his country during the war in Vietnam, only to be rejected when he returns home. The author based the story on his personal experience as an infantry squad leader who served in combat. Ron Kovic, author of Born On The Fourth of July writes in the foreword, "This little book with it's deeply compelling narrative grips the reader from the very beginning and does not let go. It is written with the violence and fury of Leon Uris's Battle Cry, and the tenderness and compassion of a simple poet. I believe it will be recognized as one of the important books to come out of the Vietnam war."

Michael McCormick is the author of Across The Pond. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps just out of high school at the age of 17. Soon after, he found himself in battle in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam. He was nearly killed on several occasions, but managed to survive and return home at age 19. After the war, Michael earned his B.A. in psychology and his M.A. in clinical psychology. He lives in Oakland, California with his wife Gina. You can contact him at: mikemccormick49@ymail.com.

Goodreads | Amazon | Twitter  

QUOTES

“I think war is a crime, if you don’t believe me, ask the infantry, ask the dead.”  

“With this work, McCormick takes his place among the other important chroniclers of this period.”

“Sean McBride had survived his war in Vietnam. At the age of nineteen, he was about to be decorated with the Silver Star Medal, the third highest military award for gallantry in action.”

“His experience in war had shaped his thinking in unique ways. He knew he was different from other men." 

 

 

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The Influence of Setting on Story; Budapest and Lake Balaton

 by Blair McDowell

Because of my long love affair with Hungary I chose to set the climax of my novel of romantic suspense, Romantic Road, there.
Lacy Telchev, a young widow on a mission to fulfill her late husband’s last wish, finds herself relentlessly pursued across Europe, to end finally at the shores of Europe’s largest inland fresh water lake, Balaton.

First I show her in the Budapest of today, a lively vibrant culture, seemingly affluent. But I wanted echoes of the past in my story, so I put words I once heard from an elderly peasant woman in the Matra Mountains, into the mouth of one of my central characters, a middle-aged doctor who remembers well the days under the Soviets and who comments pithily as to what she sees as the good and the bad of the two forms of government, Socialism and Democracy (Free-Market Economy).

One of the great things about being a writer is that we may explore both sides of issues through conflicting viewpoints of our different characters. I had Dr. Zsuzsa Szilard express a point of view that I have heard voiced by Hungarians today. They say the beautiful eighteenth and nineteenth century houses of Budapest are almost all now restored to their former splendor, but the average Hungarian can no longer afford to live in them. They have all been bought and restored by foreigners. They are lived in or rented out to foreigners. Hungarians now all have access to passports, but few can afford to travel. The city is inundated with people from poorer Eastern European counties, people seeking a better life, only to swell the already large ranks of the Hungarian unemployed. The black joke of today is “Under the Communists everybody had a job and nobody worked. Today, we’ve progressed to nobody has a job.”

Hungarian friends tell me that on the heels of the free-market economy has come massive organized crime. Whatever problems the socialist state produced, crime was not one of them. The Budapest of forty years ago was one of the safest and most crime-free cities in the world. Today, cars are stolen off the streets to be “ransomed” back to their owners. A quick way to turn a tidy profit without risk to the thieves. Free market indeed!

Still, the cafes ring with the music of the gypsies as they have for the last hundred years or more, the shops offer every product the world can produce, and people seem to be willing and able to buy them. The streets are clogged with cars, the theaters and concert halls are filled to capacity every night. Budapest is once again a sought-after destination for travelers. A rich environment for those fortunate enough to call it home.

Lake Balaton is only a short drive south of Budapest, but it is a drive into another world. The largest freshwater lake in Europe, it is good for swimming and water sports from May through September, and it lies picturesquely amid high hills covered with vines that produce some of the best wines in Europe.

 

Many vineyards are owned by private families, who raise just enough grapes to provide wine for family and friends and perhaps to sell to local restaurants. It is with such a vintner and in such a vineyard that I set the explosive climax of Romantic Road.

I was a student in Hungary some forty years ago. I see it both as it was and as it is now. A vibrant people who are survivors. They survived the Turks, they survived the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they survived the Nazis, they survived the Soviet occupation, and I have no doubt they will survive democracy. 

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When Lacy Telchev buries her husband she finds herself in treacherous waters. Igor, much older than Lacy, had secrets. Suddenly Lacy is being chased across Europe by men who believe she can lead them to those secrets. Evading her pursuers with the aid of a chance acquaintance, the handsome and mysterious Max Petersen, Lacy travels across Germany, Austria and Hungary, to a shattering discovery in Budapest.
Along the way, she meets three women from Igor’s past. As Igor’s story unfolds through them, Lacy is less and less certain who her husband really was. Who can Lacy trust? Will she survive to find out?

ROMANIAN SPRING TADITIONS by Carmen Stefanescu

Old Women’s Days

 

Romanians have a lot of customs and traditions linked to spring, especially to the month of March. Beside the lovely Martisor tradition, on 1st March, there’s also an interesting one linked to the first nine days of this month. It dates back to ancient times and I think it’s unique.

Our ancestors were aware that the first days of March are too cold, or too warm. Typical spring weather. They called these first nine days of changing weather - Old Women’s Days.

From 1st to 9th March people have to choose one day, or better said an old woman, which will reveal their true nature. If the weather is nice on that day, the person is a kind-hearted one. If the weather is rainy, cold it means the person is unkind and peevish.

Old Women’s Days finish on 9th March when the weather already gets milder and sunnier.

Where does this belief come from?  The ethnographers say that the myth is one of the most important myths in Romania, that of Dochia.

If we take into consideration that the old Roman calendar started on 1st March, then old lady Dochia is the embodiment of the old year that is ending and must die at the beginning of March. Dochia’s death on 9th March is considered a border between the cold and the warm season.

There are numerous legends regarding old lady Dochia. One of them claims Dochia is an old woman who daily scourges her young daughter-in-law. Once, on 1st March, Dochia sends her to wash black wool until it gets white. The daughter-in-law goes to the river and washes the wool until her fingers start bleeding but the wool stays black. An angel takes pity on the poor young woman. The angel gives her a white flower and tells her to touch the black wool with it and the wool will turn white. Seeing her daughter-in-law with the flower in her hand, Dochia thinks spring has come and goes up the mountain with the sheep.

She puts on nine thick sheepskins to keep her warm. But while climbing the mountain the weather gets either too warm, or too cold, it rains and her sheepskins turn wet and heavy. Dochia takes them off, one by one, until she is dressed only with her shirt. Frost comes and Dochia freezes, being turned into stone, together with her sheep, as remembrance for what happens to mean people.

So, the days between 1st and 9th March represent the time when Dochia fulfills her destiny, climbing the mountain, together with her sheep, to die for rebirth. The instability of weather during this time is due to her freakish character.

We still keep the tradition in my family. Sometimes it’s funny how my husband tries to check the weather forecast ahead to be able to pick a sunnier day. Sometimes it fits, other times it doesn’t. We have a lot of fun on this topic.

Another thing I should mention in connection with the day of 9^th March, when Dochia dies. On this day women bake a sort of small cakes having the shape of number 8. They are called mucenici/martyrs. It’s dough and sprinkled with grind nuts and honey on top. They represent the spirit of wheat brought as sacrifice to a solar deity. I think this meaning was lost along the time and is considered more as a remembrance of the dead people in one’s family.

Another more exotic custom on 9^th March, especially in the countryside, says that men should drink 40 or 44 glasses of wine. This is a reminiscent of the ancient Bacchic celebrations. This too, has lost the ancient meaning. I wonder if men have any idea where the custom originated. One thing is clear - they have an excuse to drink.

 

Find Carmen Stefanescu online at

goodreads.com ~ author

shadowspastmystery.blogspot.ro

@Carmen_Books

bookblogs~ CarmenStefanescu

     www.wildchildpublishing.com 

Carmen Stefanescu was born in Romania, the native country of the infamous vampire Count Dracula, but where, for about 50 years of communist dictatorship, just speaking about God, faith, reincarnation or paranormal phenomena could have led someone to great trouble - the psychiatric hospital if not to prison.


English teacher in her native country and mother of two daughters, Carmen Stefanescu survived the grim years of oppression, by escaping in a parallel world that of the books. 

She has dreamt all her life to become a writer, but many of the things she wrote during those years remained just drawer projects. The fall of the Ceausescu’s regime in 1989 and the opening of the country to the world meant a new beginning for her. She started publishing.

 

 

 

 

 

BROKEN WINDOW ~ NEW YORK CITY 1984

by Dorothy H. Hayes

New York City was still suffering from an economic crisis in 1984, which is the time period that Broken Window takes place. It was not the city we enjoy today. The title, Broken Window, is itself historical; it reflects a type of crime that is nonviolent but a result of the lowering of police presence of the times. People were arrested, for example, smoking pot on the street, speaking too loudly, selling items without a license. It was said that such crimes were like a broken window that allowed vermin into an otherwise sound house. Some argued, at the time, however, the police should focus on real crime; the muggings, killings and kidnapping that were taking place in the city. That arresting people for “broken window” crimes was abusive.

 

That argument still stands today. 

The neglected, failing subway trains, of the times, were relics of themselves, unreliable often leaving passengers waiting at subway stops for forty minutes or more. Ten thousand police officers were taken off the street and there were not enough officers riding the trains to protect passengers from gangs that openly roamed and threatened passengers for pocket money with weapons like screwdrivers and knives. It was the year that Bernie Goetz shot four black youths who had threatened to mug him.

Talk show hosts joked about people getting mugged. “When was the last time you were mugged?” was a typical one-liner. 

The Crips a street gang, which is the prominent gang in Broken Window, began to sell drugs in NYC, and Queens. The Crips, basically a Los Angeles gang, were known to abduct beautiful girls, which acted for an aspiring member as initiation. The gangs then passed her around or sold her. Such criminal events still happen to day and were an inspiration for me to write Broken Window. Also inspiring me were the three courageous girls in Cleveland held captive for ten years, and the revelations of human trafficking in this country of our young, mentioned by Attorney General Eric Holder. He pointed to the tens of thousands of young who have run away from home and are left defenseless on the streets, and are exploited. That was also the case in 1984. 

The graffiti marred subway station and trains became a symbol of New York City’s decline. They were unrecognizable and more like crime scenes. So when my character, Kelly Singleton, a young beautiful girl about to become a freshman at NYU disappears on the Number Six Train, in August 1984, it is totally believable.

 

 

www.dorothyhayes.com


 

 

The New York City subway was dangerous, the parents told the three Wilton High School graduates, but the girls weren’t taking no for an answer. Kelly Singleton, soon to be an NYU freshman, and her two friends board the hazardous subway train. Several stops later, her two friends get off, but Kelly is nowhere to be found. It is the torrid August of 1984, and crime is at an all-time high. Kelly’s desperate parents turn to reporter Carol Rossi and police detective Jerry Stevenson to find their missing daughter.

 

 

 

“From the first sentence to the last, Dorothy Hayes takes you on a pulse-pounding journey into the heart of darkness … With flowing prose that won’t let go, impeccable research, and characters that breathe life on the page, do not miss Broken Window.”

--Racine Hiet, author, Stanley Park: A Novel; radio host, Party 934;

 and publisher/editor, Thrive in Life Magazine

 

“Hayes captures the danger of New York City in the 1980s and the nightmare of a girl gone missing … This suspenseful story rings so true, I couldn’t put it down.”

--Garry Rodgers, retired homicide detective, forensic coroner and best-selling crime writer

 

“Wow, another great book! … Hayes continues the fast-moving mystery thriller technique of Murder at the P&Z as we follow Rossi in her search for a missing 18-year-old girl in New York City.”

--Frank Hoffman, Co-founder, All-Creatures.org

 

“Over her head, professionally and romantically.”

Scratch the surface of a small town planning and zoning department, and you’ll uncover a story. That’s what Carol Rossi counts on in the winter of 1983, and she’s right. A former teacher, age 47 and romantically involved with a much younger police officer, she needs a big story to make a success of her new career as a reporter for a Wilton, Connecticut, weekly newspaper, but murder isn’t what she had in mind. When the victim turns out to be a woman on Rossi’s beat, writing a story no longer seems enough, and she vows to find the killer. Stalked and terrorized, Rossi soon finds herself in over her head, professionally and romantically.

Published by Mainly Murder Press: February 17, 2013 

Broken Window, another Carol Rossi mystery, will be published in the spring.

 

 

Dorothy Hayes, a staff writer for local Connecticut newspapers for five years, received and honorary award for her in-depth series on Vietnam Veterans from the Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to that she was a Language Arts teacher. A staff writer for a national animal protection organization, for six years, she wrote Animal Instinct, 2006. Dorothy lives in Stamford, CT with her husband, Arthur. She also raised four children, and is the mother-in-law to three, grandmother to fourteen, and is GN to Bella. She writes for WomenofMystery.Net, CriminalElement.Com, and is a member of Sisters-in-Crime-Tri-State Chapter, and Mystery Writers of American. Visit her at DorothyHayes.com for more information. 

Dorothy began her writing experience as a staff writer for the Connecticut newspaper, The Wilton Bulletin.  After three years she moved on to the larger regional daily newspaper, The Hour in Norwalk.  During her tenure at this paper, she received an honorary award for her in-depth series on Vietnam Veterans from the Connecticut chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Following her time at The Hour, she held the position of staff writer for a national animal protection organization for six  years.  In this role she was engaged in lobbying efforts at the state capital on behalf of animal protection and local and national campaigns for the advancement of animal rights.