Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 13
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While I have always had a wildly creative and eccentric
imagination, it bore no real fruit until it was harnessed. Numerous
people and experiences helped me accomplish that, but I want to
thank the late Bonnie Cardone, who hired me as assistant editor at
Skin Diver Magazine in late 1980. Under her tutelage, I first
discovered that I could write. I started with diving equipment articles
in SDM, which eventually led me to fiction in various genres, outside
the magazine.
Michele Buttelman was the features editor at The Signal
newspaper, who hired me in 2006 as a features writer. In that
capacity, I wrote about all sorts of things, but when I first dabbled
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them and allow them in her weekly magazine, Escape – which later,
with me as editor, became Connect SCV. My columns impressed enough
people at the paper (particularly the late Lila Littlejohn, then-editor)
so that, for a long stretch, they appeared on the main newspaper
pages – sometimes on the front page, and sometimes as “Featured
&RPPHQWDUµwhich were cool, but also on the opinion pages, along
with the angry political diatribes. While I appreciated the recognition,
I never felt sure opinion page readers were going there for humor,
and was relieved when my columns went back in a weekly.
While I was Escape editor, I built the pages for my own columns,
choosing photos, creating graphics, etc. However, when Escape became
Connect SCV, I was partnered with graphic designer Karen Peraza, and
