Welcome

I love words and writing and my favorite things are fat college-lined notebooks and pens with bold ink so that I can scribble down all of my thoughts and plots (which I have to type up quickly or I won’t be able to read them!).  I discovered my grammar book in the 4th grade, and in the 7th grade I learned how to diagram sentences with all the parts of speech. Both have stood me in good stead as a writer.  Having grown up in southern California, I fell in love with the movies and decided that I would pursue a career as a screenwriter. After earning a BA in English from UCLA, I attended their film school, and earned an MFA degree in Film and Screenwriting. Turns out the best part of that decision was meeting my husband, Ivan Rothberg. After graduation, Ivan and I collaborated on numerous screenplays and succeeded in optioning many. 

          I went on to work in the Hollywood Film Industry as a story analyst and am a member of the IATSE Editor’s Guild.   I worked for most of the major movie studios, including 15 years at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank.   As a story analyst, I read thousands of scripts and novels, which was good preparation for being a writer. In between working full time and raising my two daughters, I continued to write when I could and even tried my hand at stage writing with “Intimations of Mortality,” a family dramedy, which received several professional stage readings.    

Then my younger daughter, Shaina, grew up and started telling me all of her amazing ideas for stories. As almost all films these days are based on novels, I began toying with the idea of writing a novel, though as a screenwriter, I didn’t think narrative writing was my strong suit. Nonetheless, I plunged ahead and collaborated with Shaina on our first novel, “Princess Death,” a fantasy fairy tale in the vein of the Disney princess tales, which we self-published on Amazon in January ’17.  Shaina and I have since written a second fantasy adventure novel,”Kubaba.”  As a solo author, I went on to write “Transits of Venus,” a romantic comedy followed by “Escape to Planet Earth,” a sci-fi adventure tale, and most recently my “Club California” mystery series.   

            I am surprised to discover that I very much enjoy writing novels (though I’ve also written screenplays for most of my books).   In all my stories, I try to be entertaining and to convey a positive and hopeful message, along with a good dose of irony and humor. 

            I live in the lovely SoCal suburb of Agoura Hills with my husband, my two adult daughters, and our five cats, including the illustrious Loki, who makes his fiction debut in “Escape to Planet Earth.”