A friend once said “when we stopped building front porches on houses we, as a society, lost our ability to tell stories.” So when people ask “Why do you write”? I tell them it’s because I feel the innate need to connect to others through stories.
I tell stories because I come from a family of storytellers. (That’s me in the photo a few years back intently listening to my Nana.) We tell stories about the folks who are no longer with us. We tell stories about people we meet. We tell stories about each other and – good or bad – they are told while we are right there to share in the laughter or blush at our past stupidity.
It is the stories we tell each other that connect us. The stories we tell keep the past alive, the present a shared experience, and the future full of potential.
Writing allows me the freedom to tell stories that are funny, insightful, cutting. They can be fact, embellished, or out-and-out fiction about family, friends, the world, monsters (real and imagined), relationships, life experiences, pearls of wisdom, things that make me laugh or grieve.
My husband and I have moved all over the United States. In all of those moves only one house had a proper front porch. There was no homey place to sit with somebody on a warm night to sip iced tea or glass of wine. There was no place to relax and watch the world go by; no place to kick back and tell each other stories of our day, our lives, our dreams.
I miss the days of relaxing on front porches and hearing stories from adults and kids alike. I write because I have the need to share, 
to be a part of something greater than myself. I write because stories are what survive long after we are gone.
Front porches may have disappeared from most homes, but I want to believe we have not lost our ability to connect to each other through our stories. I want to entertain you, or at least, make you think about what I’ve said. I write because I have an innate need to tell stories.
I hope you’ll come along for the ride.