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That's me, smiling in the stands at Martinsville, one of the coolest Nascar tracks around. |
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Tracy's Biography I should have known I wasn't going to practice law until I died when I wrote a murder mystery during my tax class in law school. Twenty years after I passed the bar exam, I finally listened to the voice inside me that said 'now it's time to get to work on the next part of your life.' I've been writing full-time ever since. I look upon those twenty years in the trenches (in general practice) as preparation for doing what I love. Raised with the high standards of Southern women, my mother and both grandmothers, my roots go to the bedrock of Southern culture. A lady always owns a string of good pearls and sterling silver place settings for twelve, makes her chicken salad white meat only, never wears colored underwear, and is mentioned in the newspaper only upon the occasion of her birth, marriage, and death. Though my childhood was spent moving everywhere the army stationed my father, home was always a grandmother's house in either Virginia or Georgia. After a year in college at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon (and the registrar's office being blown to smithereens), I was lucky to get into my mother's alma mater, Hollins College. There I discovered I could write stories and get college credit as well. A bent for social activism sent me to law school, however, where I was one of a handful of women in a class of over a hundred men, not many of whom were thrilled in those days to see women practicing law. My dander was up. I would prove women lawyers could do more than draft wills and trusts. I wanted courtroom work, and I found it. My first client, a gang member up on a murder charge, asked me how many cases I'd lost. I told him, truthfully, none. His was the first. Practicing law wasn't exactly relaxing, so I took up all sorts of stress-reducing activities. Marathoning, kayaking, and playing very bad tennis were passions until I discovered fast stock cars and tailgating were more fun than all three other sports combined. So now, I take off for race weekends whenever possible. I love them all - local small track racing, Cup, Busch, and Craftsman Truck send out a siren call that's impossible to ignore. Thank goodness for the Speed Channel! As you can tell, Nascar is a big deal in our house - we've all taken laps in a Petty Experience race car except for our family photographer, who catches us grinning like we've won the lottery as we take to the track at Daytona and Richmond. See my Nascar page. When I'm not rooting for Mark Martin or Denny Hamlin, I'm working on a suspense/romance story about an art history professor who gets shanghied into a dangerous game with terrorists who've stolen a priceless Hittite artifact. When that's shaped up, I'm hoping to work on a Nascar mystery. Lots of plot lines keep jumping into my head, which is fun when you love something as much as I love Nascar. Murder and mayhem on the track are a distinct possiblity for a future book, with plenty of beatin' and bangin' in the deal as well. If you'd like to see pictures of some of my favorite tracks and races, click here.  |
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