DeniauI was born northeast of Indianapolis and raised in the house my paternal grandfather built. Short version of my arduous herstory: a Dickensian childhood . . . But we had so many great books-all the Classics, like "Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Se" and "Treasure Island"; rich green and gold gilt Sherlock Holmes books prized by my City Attorney grandfather; and all twelve Oz Books, by L. Frank Baum! Reading great books made me literate. By the time I was eight, I was either reading or playing baseball with my neighborhood friends in a vacant lot two doors down. We played hard ball, and I was a pitcher. I could hit too. I found sports-all "target" sports-to be my salvation during childhood: tennis, bowling, archery (at summer camp) volleyball, and, later, frisbee. I enjoyed a rich liberal arts education from junior high school through my Undergraduate studies at Butler University. My advisor for my Journalism Major at Butler was a retired Air Force Colonel who smoked stogies in the classroom and who promised me scholarship money for my many bylines in the college newspaper. (I had exactly one page of notes at the end of the first semester.) When a sorority sister started dating the senior editor of "The Butler Collegian," she got the scholarship money instead. And so I bypassed the Colonel's signed registration form for the next year by erasing his inked entries and switching to English. He was furious when I saw him on campus the next Fall semester. He sneered: "You'll never get a job for a national newspaper or magazine now! (Wrong . . .) Being a Hoosier, I had no idea there were ethnic groups until I moved to the Philadelphia area when I was twenty-three. There I worked in TV GUIDE Magazine's National headquarters in Radnor as a Senior Syndication Writer in National Programming. In Indianapolis I had already served for two years on the joint editorial staffs of Curtis Publishing's HOLIDAY Magazine (acquired from New York) and the resuscitated "Saturday Evening Post." After four years at TV GUIDE, I decided to go to Graduate School at Ohio University (Athens). By then I was almost thirty, and so I had real world experience to help me excel. I chose OU's Graduate Writing Program because I could do a creative thesis, which eventually became my award-winning novel, "Stiff Hearts." Until 2021 I didn't realize that those years were considered "The Golden Years" of OU's Graduate Writing Program--not only because of such resident instructors as Walter Tevis and Daniel Keyes but also due to such Visiting Lecturers as poet Stanley Plumley, novelist Mary Robison, and distinguished elder poet Robert Bly. Daniel Keys championed my short story, "In Gillian's Room," which became my thesis-a novella with the same title. Mary Robison was my Thesis Director. Finally, after years of layered editing, "Stiff Hearts" was published in late July 2021. Finally, I want to share that my novels continue to be cross-genre. I find that "magic realism" perfectly describes my favorite life experiences! And how I write my books. I held back a bit on the magic realism in "Stiff Hearts." However, in my second novel, "Hologram," I let magic realism permeate the entire narrative, including the romantic subplot that drives my anti-hero/narrator on his quest. I am currently incubating "Hologram's" "bookend" project-a fictional memoir called "The Autobiography of Lucille Muhr." I now live in Central Gulf Coast Florida with my little cat family fifteen minutes from the nearest beach. I spend most days writing at my worktable, which stands by the sliding glass doors of my lanai, and I enjoy, feed, and water the wildlife attracted to my gardens below. Read More Read Less
