Marsh Rose
Author
Oh good, you’re here . . .
Relax. I can’t see you. This isn’t one of those new websites where I’m secretly on the other side of your screen, peeking out at you. It’s perfectly safe. Here’s where you can read my published stories, find out more about my work, and buy my novels, Escape Routes and Lies and Love in Alaska . You can access my Facebook, Goodreads and LinkedIn pages, and fill out a form to contact me. A click on Landlady Letters will take you to my blog. You may be surprised. A brief description of each link is listed below. So dive in.
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By the way, I love that shirt you’re wearing right now. It really matches your eyes.
I’m a freelance writer, a licensed psychotherapist, and I teach psychology courses at Mendocino College here in the northern California wine country. Back in high school I landed a job as a reporter at the local daily paper, and even after I changed careers many years ago a great part of my heart and almost all of my free time are devoted to writing.
You can find out more by clicking on About.
Books
ESCAPE ROUTES
Available Now!
Escape Routes is a tale of maturity under duress. At the age of 40, pampered psychotherapist Lauren Olive loses her job in the cushy California wine country. Then the love of her life abandons her for his hairdresser. Alone and without resources, she’s forced to move to a decrepit bungalow in the backwoods and accept work as a drug counselor in a rural jail. If she’s going to survive financially, regain normality, and avoid returning to Philadelphia to live with her parents, Lauren must confront challenges she never could have imagined in her comfortable city life. Escape Routes speaks to the emerging audience of readers who want stories of growth and accomplishment by strong women in compelling situations.
People ask me, “is Lies and Love in Alaska a true story?” Yes, in a sense. The characters are fictional but the story is true. And thankfully it’s not my story. It happened to many women during a strange time in the 1990s. Go to the Book's Page to read about the novel and how it came to be. You can buy a copy online on Amazon or through your local Bookstore.
I made a potentially fatal mistake as a writer one early morning in 1994 when I answered the phone to a woman who said she was an editor at Cosmopolitan Magazine. She said they wanted to publish a short story I had sent them. And I said, “cut it out, Mom; that’s not funny.” Oops. Lucky for me, that Cosmopolitan editor had a sense of humor and I’ve been pretty lucky in the world of freelance writing ever since, thanks in part to my mentors Adair Lara (Naked, Drunk and Writing) and Marion Roach Smith (The Memoir Project). My published work is sometimes called memoir, sometimes first-person, mostly humor with some pathos thrown in. It’s about life, in other words. You can read some of it by clicking on this link.
I promised my dogs some space here. It’s risky, I know, letting greyhounds write my blog. They’re a temperamental breed and Adin in particular can be cranky, especially when we’re having one of our domestic spats like how the chicken I had thawing on the countertop ended up out on the lawn. (I still don’t think it was the wind.) But I’m willing to give them some freedom of expression. They're sensitive about their public personae and prefer to be known as my tenants.
Read it all in the Landlady Letters Blog.
