Two-time international award-winning author of the Sheldon Family Saga

These are gritty, challenging books, filled with deeply flawed characters facing real traumas – abuse, alcoholism, abandonment, incest, cancer, depression, sexual assault, infidelity, abortion, false accusations, suicide – who ultimately rely on prayer and their faith to help them emerge stronger.

Rita has been writing since she could hold a pencil. She’s a national award-winning journalist and award-winning essayist, photographer, parody songwriter and visual artist. Plus, her lemon-ginger cookies (her own recipe) took first prize in the “Any Other Drop Cookie” category at the 2022 Cumberland County Fair.

Bitten by the radio bug at an early age, this onetime DJ and radio news director weaves elements of the broadcast world and its assorted quirky personalities into her novels. A native and longtime resident of Connecticut, Rita, her husband and her butterscotch tabby live on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, where she’s an independent editor, interior-layout artist and “literary midwife.” Read more.