Life Not Expected

Born in her grandparents' bedroom on October 11, 1925, Violet Grayson says of her writing, "At the age of fourteen, I wrote a poem and a rather dismal short story. I sent the short story to Collier's magazine, where it was immediately rejected. I redeemed my pride by later winning a school-wide essay contest at Cumberland High School and becoming an at-large reporter for our school paper, The Chronicle. As a senior, I was named literary editor of our yearbook. My English teacher, Mr. Skahan, suggested I switch to the college course since he saw me as scholarship material, but that was too much of a reach in those Great Depression years. After graduating in 1943, I worked in an office, married in 1949, and became a mother in 1950 and then a single parent in 1952. My writing would have to wait until January 1986 when, at the age of sixty, I launched my literary career." Violet has had twenty-four personal-experience stories, articles, how-to pieces, and short stories published. She also wrote a column for the Foxboro Reporter in her former home of Foxboro, Massachusetts. In California, since 1993, she contributed to "Two Cents," an opinion column in the San Francisco Chronicle maintained by a pool of citizens. She is an active member and Secretary of Writers West of Alameda Inc. This is her fourth book. The first, In the Village Lonsdale, was published in 2006. Her second, A Gossamer Cord, was published in 2011. Her third, Jeremy's Cottage, was published in 2013.