Writer (professional, published, in several genres). Ravenous reader (in even more genres than I write in, with contempory fiction probably my number one fave). Cook (durn good at it), occasionally professionally (yeah, that might've been me you saw on TV). Peripatetic. No stranger to the gym. Smart, repartee-loving, and coincidentally quite a babe, if you go for voluptuous, irreverent intellectuals. Widowed young and suddenly, three years ago, from a man I adored, whom I'd been with 20 plus years. This --- the marriage overall and particularly his abrupt departure from life --- are what I am currently active in trying to compost/integrate/metabolize (the correct metaphor depends on the day and hour). Does this explain why a Yankee who lived in the South her entire adult life just now spent two months in Los Angeles, California, and is now in rural-but-hip Vermont? No, I thought not. So, though I am one of the most upfront people in the universe face to face, perhaps here, for brevity's sake, I can be a woman of mystery.

Formerly book-acquisitive in a manner bordering on obsessive and definitely impractical. But, being in a phase where I am "at large" instead of in one place more or less permanently (that's what widowhood'll do to you: force reinvention--- that and toting box after box of of book to the storage unit), I'd been looking for a way to release/relinquish books. Then along came BookCrossing. Free, free, set them free!