Auditions, Competitions, and Intensives: Why, When, What to Expect

I’m from New Orleans, where ghosts and devils are part of everyday life, so it is only natural that I write fiction and nonfiction based on true stories. Most little girls dream of growing up to be a ballet dancer. I have always wanted to be a writer, and I am the author of four nonfiction and three fiction books so far…

But I received my early ballet training from Lelia Haller, one of the first Americans to dance in the Paris Opera, before continuing with Houston Ballet under James Clouser and Nicholas Polejenko. I am grateful to have studied with Danilova, Balanchine, Martha Graham, Eric Hawkins, David Howard, and other legendary teachers. I’ve taught at ballet schools throughout the southeast for over forty years.

The Garage Ballet Series is a collaborative mother-daughter effort. My two daughters, Dominique Crisler and Caroline Ruder assisted with classes and danced through college level at Northern Illinois University and the University of South Carolina. They now advise and edit my nonfiction ballet books.

The goal of Garage Ballet is to mentor students, teachers, and parents through easy-to-understand explanations of ballet technique and training. I passionately believe the study of ballet yields life skills of proven value for every student, from PreBallet to Preprofessional to Adult. Ballet really does Help Everything! Writing included!

I am the mother of two sons as well and have been married to the same Emergency physician through it all. So conversation at my dinner table may range from culinary comparisons to debates on different interpretations of the same role in a ballet performance to pure medical macabre.

But I remember... Life can change in an instant. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina obliterated our home and all our belongings in the space of a single Monday morning.

I was blown with my two youngest, who were still at home from Gulfport, MS, to Huntsville, AL, while my husband, one of nine ER docs in the only Emergency Department operating within a ninety-mile radius, stayed behind. We survived the storm, but the separation and arduous task of rebuilding almost did us in. Lesson learned. Things can always be worse!

My first novel Against The Wind, a YA coming of age, catastrophe thriller, is based on our encounter with the storm.

I began work on The Last Plague long before Covid, but the eerie undertone of the prescient tale resonates with the pandemic. The novel is a sci-fi dystopian glance into a near future where medicine runs amok with bioengineered clones, weaponized viruses, and a forbidden love story.

Dead Children’s Playground takes its title from a hidden playground in Huntsville and a Rocket City urban legend. Huntsville is a beautiful and strange place where in the early 60s, rural Appalachia collided with Nazi Germany.

My writing will always be peppered with stories from my convoluted, crazy, and unique life as a daughter, wife, mother, dancer, teacher... person.