"critical observations about soap operas - their content, the industry that produces them, and the culture that both loves them and loves to ridicule them..."

I love WomenArts' pithy and succinct description of my work.

I'm just settling in to Wattpad after 6+ years at Red Room, but here's the CliffNotes' version:

I began writing about soaps in 1990, and after publishing several articles in Soap Opera Weekly, I received an assignment from Smithsonian Magazine to write a piece on the 40th anniversary of As the World Turns. It took me over a year to place the piece, but by the time I finally arrived on the set in March of 1996, it was clear that the show was beginning its final descent (ATWT's final episode aired in September 2010). At the time, I could see bits and pieces of what was wrong, but had no idea how to put those pieces together, so I was forced to abandon the piece. But, disappointing as this failure was, it actually planted the seeds for my future work.

In 2012, I released a collection of essays on the final years of ATWT, as the world stopped turning..., as a Kindle single. A few years earlier, intending to make a documentary, I began researching the life of Irna Phillips, who virtually single-handedly created the soap opera genre. When I realized that a documentary was not doable, I began dramatizing Phillips' life.  I was kicking around the idea of a one-woman play when someone said, "what about a biopic." And I said, "that could work." 

And work it has been. Almost there, so stay tuned.