I guess the first thing I should tell you is why I don’t have a picture. The fact is it really doesn’t matter what I look like and I use the “Happy Writer” icon because that’s exactly what I am. I enjoy writing, and I hope you enjoy what I write.I started writing when I was in high school quite by accident. I was in the tenth grade, and there was a girl that sat next to me that I had a crush on. I was shy and couldn’t talk to her, so I went to the library, copied a poem, and gave it to her. She wasn’t impressed. I thought she must have known I copied it so I wrote a poem of my own and she loved it. From then on, I kept writing poems.Later I began to write short stories, and one of my teachers said I was good at it. I continued writing through high school. After I graduated, I kicked around from job to job and town to town, then I decided to go back to school. I intended to become an alcohol and drug rehabilitation counselor, but I continued in school and eventually earned a master’s degree in psychology and earned a marriage and family therapist license.After working as a therapist for several years, I began to write again, only this time, I started writing novels. I write thrillers because at their root is a search for justice. I saw a lot of injustice while I was floating around from job to job, and I saw injustice as a therapist. I worked with severely mentally ill clients and teens with substance abuse problems and co-occurring mental disorders. These were vulnerable populations and often required intervention with the criminal courts and assistance with getting their needs met.Now I spend most of my extra time writing. So far I’ve written three novels in the “Elgie Reynolds, LAPD” series and two in the “Derrick Forrester & Associates, Private Investigators” series. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. The novels in the Reynolds series are “Tracking the Butcher: In Search of a Serial Killer,” “Blood on the Badge,” and “Scorpion.” The novels in the Forrester series are “Hardened Hearts” and “Anastasia.”