Janet's "Orkney Day-Tripper" won first place in the Writers Journal travel writing contest in November of 2003. The article was published in the May/June, 2004, issue of Writers Journal. Her short piece, "Aunt Ella's Model-T" was published in the March, 2007, issue of Cobblestone magazine. Since May of 2006, her local history column, "Did You Know?" has appeared every other week in Harrisburg Horizons newspaper.
As a member of the Queens Writers Group, which is made up of individuals who have completed Judy Simpson's fiction writing course, Janet's work has been published in two books. Her first short story, "The Tailor's Shears" was published in 2002 in Inheriting Scotland, a collection of short stories edited by Theresa Reilly Alsop. Another of Janet's short stories, "Slip-Sliding Away" was published (and was the lead story) in 2003 in Tales for a Long Winter's Night, edited by Judith H. Simpson.
Janet is a member of Rocky River Presbyterian Church, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Harrisburg Historical Society, the North Carolina Society of Historians, the Cabarrus Genealogy Society, the North Carolina Presbyterian Historical Society, the Book Ends Book Club, and Queens Writers Group.
Janet received a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science with a minor in history from Appalachian State University and a Master of Public Administration from North Carolina State University at Raleigh. A lifelong interest in family history led her to team up with her sister, Marie, to compile three Rocky River Morrison genealogy books that were published in 1996.
After working in local government and the travel industry, Janet discovered in her forties that she really wanted to be a writer. Taking Judy Simpson's fiction writing course at Queens University in Charlotte gave her the skills she needed to be a freelance writer.
