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I became interested in researching the history of the Black Caribs of St. Vincent Island while preparing for a master's thesis in history. I continued reading about the Caribs, Caribbean history, and the people brought to the Caribbean as forced labor. I wanted to depict what it must have been like for these people from their imagined point of view and how they may have contributed to the blended ethnic group, the Black Caribs or Garifuna of St. Vincent Island. I visited St. Vincent four times and the last Carib reserve on Dominica once to see their mock-up traditional village. I began writing a series about the Black Caribs ten years ago. I have been working on my writing craft by taking classes, earning a writing certificate at Stanford University, and a masters in fine arts/fiction at the University of California, Riverside. I attend writers' conferences and belong to the Historical Novel Society. My article ""Caribs, Maroons, Jacobins, Brigands, and Sugar Barons"" appeared on several online scholarly websites and was published in an anthology about the Black Caribs. I published my first novel, Chatoyer: Freedom's War Chief, in 2022 via Book Baby. Education: BA Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, MAs Education/PE, Humanities/History, Anthropology, Fine Arts/fiction, Ph.D. Education. I taught college and secondary students in Panama, Japan, Italy, and Spain. Now retired, I enjoy writing and paddling Hawaiian outrigger canoes in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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