After many years, I retired from Nursing in early 2021. Of those years, I've spent twenty in the field of Psychiatry/Mental Health and Substance Abuse Nursing. What drives human behavior and what people do over the course of time - and why- has always interested me.
My stories are not bodice-busting, or thrilling, or gory. My subjects may seem ordinary, but even the most ordinary life can be wracked with challenges. I think how we deal with those challenges can be interesting, even fascinating. I've come to the conclusion that all of it is understandable if we look close enough. All of it is human, and all of us are capable of becoming better, but never perfect, human beings.
My very short list of published writing was done while I pursued my Masters in Psychiatric Nursing. It includes one scholarly article in The Journal of Psychosocial and Mental Health Nursing (August, 2001: Revisiting the Identity Issue in Anorexia). Two essays appear in a collection of stories, "Beveled Edges, A Portrait of Caring, Nurses Reflections" (May, 2000), part of a class project in my Masters program at George Mason University. The third essay appears in Ordinary Miracles in Nursing (published in 2006 -- edited by Patricia Winstead-Fry and Deborah R. Labovitz). My subjects are the people I've met over time (be they personal friends or patients), their challenges, and my efforts to understand and support them.
My other writing has included personal essays about life-stuff. I've completed two novels/novellas, none of them truly "published," but I have made an extra effort to polish up and eventually publish my third novel. Any Joe is that third novel.
Please see my web/blog site for more: https://closertoreal.com