My addictions include chocolate, ballet, hats—and social justice.

The less exotic me was a businesswoman before turning to fiction writing: I worked for Redbook Magazine and was the Publisher of Savvy Woman magazine. An adjunct professor of marketing at Long Island University and a marketing consultant to Fortune 500 companies, I was a volunteer counselor and lecturer for the Small Business Administration and a member of United States Information Agency missions to Russia. My activities in women’s organizations led to my participation at the 1995 International Women's Conference in Beijing, where I learned of the atrocities of The Dying Rooms, the Chinese orphanages where the documented death rate was 80%. Further researching the subject for my second novel, CHINA DOLL, I spent some time on cultural studies at the university in Hangzhou. I then traveled the Chinese countryside, spending hours with women—university professors, industry directors, aging farmers, and budding entrepreneurs—over my jars of American peanut butter, chatting about life, work, and the role of women in both societies.

My research into the issue of infanticide became the platform for my presentation at the U.N. in 2007 about infanticide in China—the first ever in U.N. history.

My first novel, PUPPET CHILD, was listed in The Top 10 Favorite First Novels 2002 (BookBrowse.com) and won me an Outstanding Author Award (BookReviewCafe.com). It launched The Protective Parent Reform Act, a law now passed or under consideration in two dozens states and the platform for two State Senatorial candidate. My personal essays—some winners of the Writer's Digest Writing Competition—appeared in The New York Times, Chocolate For Women anthologies [Simon & Schuster], Cup of Comfort [Adams Media] and The Best Jewish Writing 2003 (John Wiley & Son). Several of my short stories entered Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope’s Hall of Fame and were published in literary magazines such as Lynx Eye, River Sedge, Moxie, Lilith, Midstream, Rosebud, Confrontation and North Atlantic Review.

 My latest (yet unpublished) novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN, was a semi-finalist in 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest (out of close to 10,000 submissions!) It will be published in 2011 by HarperCollins.

I and my hubby Ron, have four grown children. We live in New York and are blessed in every which way….

How did you get to where you are now?

Determination and vision. Stick-to-it-ivness.

My moto is "Don't wait for things to happen, make them happen."

How do you see yourself differently now than you did 10 years ago?

Time is running out. Better grab more out of life--and fix the world for others who cannot do it themselves.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Oh, no.

Or, I will be walking down the aisle in the Academy Awards ceremony because one of my novels has been turned into a fabulous movie.... (But then again, the authors are barely mentioned.)