Whether I’m writing fiction or drama, reaching into the past or projecting the future, I like to entertain while sparking reflection and debate that lift my writing beyond simply telling a story. I want my readers and audiences not only to identify with my characters but also to consider the social context in which each story takes place. I am both African-American and a member of Mystery Writers of America, and my work is often a fusion of the two sensibilities.

For example, the play Matter of Intent, winner of the MWA Edgar Allan Poe Award, is a courtroom drama/murder mystery that takes place in Buffalo in 1960 when the city had only three black women lawyers. It examines the failure of the insanity defense for black defendants. The Scavenger's Daughter is a family drama/ murder mystery that explores the impact of Alzheimers and mental illness on a middle class African-American family. The Mark of Cain is a courtroom drama inspired by the 1925 Ossian Sweet case in which Clarence Darrow defended a black doctor and his family charged with murder after a man in a mob attacking their new home was shot dead. Cain asks what it takes for someone to be seen as a good American. The Man Who Saved the President, Almost is a short play that fictionalizes a moment in the life of the very real James Benjamin Parker, the waiter who stopped William McKinley's assassin from firing a third shot and then was denied recognition for his heroism because he was black.

Limited to neither genre, I also have written plays with other themes. The Best Woman is about the first presidential election in which both candidates are women, and The Guns of Christmas is a tale of the spontaneous 1914 holiday truces that interrupted the carnage of WWI. Stoker's Guest is a thriller about the inspiration for Dracula.

I enjoy telling a good story that means something, but I am not averse to having fun. The Eye of the Beholder is a playful short about a one night stand between a blind poet and an older woman who picks him up in a bar. Sleepwalker is a stage adaptation of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari designed to be staged in black and white, like the 1919 silent film on which it is based. Murder Squared is an evening of theater composed of four short mysteries, each with a humorous or wicked twist in the tradition of the old Alfred Hitchcock TV show. Real Friends has moments of humor when three men who remove the body of a dead friend from the motel room where he died with his mistress realize he was murdered, not the victim of a heart attack.

At heart I am a storyteller, helpless to do anything but tell tales..