As a young girl, I found "happily ever afters" boring, an unfit ending for the elaborate stories I imagined. Were those hours of daydreaming in my tree house in Northern California the start of my writers journey to understanding plot? Possibly, though it took years and an act of magic before I ever actually wrote one of my stories down on paper.

Language came late for me. And what could be better for a child born without language than a mother gifted in art? Nonverbal well beyond all developmental terms, I relied on my mother's favorite past time of doodling. She doodled while talking on the telephone, listening to the radio, waiting for doctor's appointments and dentist visits, during piano lessons and church choir practices. Her words, like everyone else's were mostly a jumbled mass of meaningless chatter, but her pictures conveyed her message.

Years of speech therapy finally taught me to speak so that others besides just my mother could understand me. However, to unjumble the mess dyslexia made for me with expressive language, verbal and written, I had to first complete college, earn all kinds of degrees and work one-on-one with hundreds of children. Fifteen years ago, I sold my speech, language, and learning disability clinic and, by chance, offered to organize the research my father and mother had uncovered about a famous family ancestor - Commodore Robert Field Stockton. I still remember the day that Robert, or Bobby, his horse and buggy out of control racing down Stockton Street in 1809 Princeton, New Jersey, headed straight off the computer screen and into my life. The joy of that creative magic continues to thrill me today.

Having taken twelve years to truly grasp the elusive concept of plot and use it effectively in my own works of fiction, I now find joy in sharing with writers of all ages what I have learned about plot. My passion is to teach others how to plot their writing projects and have fun doing it. My work helping writers find the structure of their stories continues through my DVDs and BLOCKBUSTER PLOTS Pure & Simple, and the other plot tools in the Blockbuter Plots line. In all of the plot tools, I present step-by-step strategies that demystify the structure of story. Whether a writer of novels, screenplays, memoirs, short stories or creative non-fiction, everyone benefits from a visual representation of the scenes and plot of his or her project.

For an article on Martha's work with children, click here

EDUCATION AND CERTIFICATION Master of Arts Bachelor of Arts, Psychology Bachelor of Arts, Speech Pathology California Teachers Credential in Special Education Certificate of Clinical Competence/Awarded by the American Speech and Hearing Association Licensed by the California Medical Board of Examiners

AWARDS

• Search for a Best Seller Contest
• Southwest Writers Workshop
• Pacific Northwest Writers Conference Literary Contest
• William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition
• Writer's Network 4th Annual Fiction Contest
• The Heekin Group Contest
• Jack London Writing Contest


• 2005 California Association of Library Trustees and Commissioners nominee for "her outstanding contribution in developing and providing annual Young Writers Workshops for children and youth in Los Gatos for the past five years, and extending the program to the children and youth of the Santa Clara County Children's Shelter."
  • "The astonished look of accomplishment on the kid's faces is a wonderful testament of your gift to teach. We are forever grateful for the time you shared and are anxiously awaiting your next visit. The Children's Shelter is a temporary placement facility for abused, neglected and abandoned children. Thanks again for making a difference in the lives of our children." Mark Forrest, Recreation Director.

PLOT WRITING WORKSHOP CREDITS Learning Annex Writing Salon University of California Santa Cruz Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Romance Writers of America -- Silicon Valley Chapter California Writers Club Peninsula Branch South Bay Branch Central Coast Branch Mt. Diablo Branch Marin Branch National Writers Union 2004 Oakland Literature Expo Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators Port Angeles Writers Club Friends of Los Gatos Library - Kid's Writing Workshops Private Plot Intensives

• 2007 San Francisco Writers Conference
• 2007 Jack London Writers Conference
• 2006 East of Eden Writers Conference
• Silicon Valley RWA 2006 Prepare to Pitch!
• 25th Steinbeck Festival "Folk, Film & Fish"
• 2005 Jack London Writers Conference
• 2003 Jack London Writers Conference
• 2004 East of Eden Writers Conference
• 2002 East of Eden Writers Conference
• Jack London Writers Kid's Camp

• 2007 Asilomar Regional Reading Conference
• 2006 Literacy Lasts a Lifetime by California Reading Association
• 2006 California School Library Association Annual Conference

• DeAnza College ~ Writing for a Living
• California College of the Arts ~ Writing Screenplays

• Women's National Book Association -- San Francisco Chapter
• Publisher's Marketing Association
• Bay Area Independent Publishers Association
• California Writers Club -- San Francisco Branch
• National Speakers Association
• The International Women's Writing Guild

• Capitola Book Cafe
• Book Passage
• BARNES & NOBLE Bookstore
• Pruneyard
• East Ridge
• BORDERS Bookstores
• Stonestown
• Santana Row
• Sunnyvale
• Blossom Hill
• Los Gatos
• San Francisco

Non-Fiction WRITING CREDITS
• BLOCKBUSTER PLOTS Pure & Simple ISBN 1-877809-19-5
• Writers Digest Magazine
• The Bulletin; Voice of the California Writers Club -- ongoing PLOT column
• Romance Writers of Australia
• Writersstore.com
• Blockbusterplots.com -- ongoing PLOT tips eZine
• Bay Area PARENT
• Bay Area HOMESTYLE, managing editor

LECTURES
• The Haggin Museum in Stockton, CA (featured in their local newspaper - The Record)
• The Los Gatos History Club (featured in the Los Gatos Weekly Times and the San Jose Mercury News)
• The California Historical Society (featured in the California Chronicle)

      Throughout the writing of Spirits at War, Mara, a minor, fictionalized character that showed up in the first paragraph of the first draft, kept bullying her way into the story. In the end, what began as a fictionalized biography of Robert Field Stockton (the man who founded Liberia for the freed slaves of America, invented the first screw propelled naval battleship, and conquered California with Fremont and Kearny), turned into a story of a wood carver's quest for freedom.

      I fought against Mara for years. As a slave on the Stockton estate in Princeton, New Jersey-the last northern state to pass a law freeing slaves, Mara is black. The angst I suffered over my right as a white woman to write this story from a black point of view cannot be underplayed. Words I heard uttered first from Maya Angelou, smoothed the way for me. We are, each of us, more alike than we are different.

      I have always been fascinated to learn how someone I know was in the exact same place at exactly the same time I was years before we ever actually met. Using that as a theme, I am working on Parallel Lives, a novel of class and the politics of the 1960s that tracks the lives of Billy Wayman Wolden and April Stewart.

      Billy's storyline explores the legacy left him through his Potowatomi Indian ancestry. April, in her struggle to become her own person, must first, as in Nietzsche's parable on maturity, slay the dragon of "Thou Shalt".

      When these two characters finally meet, though their lives have run on parallel tracks, it is the odd moments when they intersect that create in both of Billy and April the haunting feeling that they have met somewhere before. At the story's end, the reader is left to decide if the random intersections in all our lives are fate, or nothing more than just chance encounters.