Fulfill Your Dreams With A New Career |
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Sister Carol Anne O'Marie
Age: 63
Oakland, California
First career: Elementary school teacher (nun)
Second careers: Mystery writer, co-founder of 26-bed shelter for homeless women
It all started innocently enough. To deal with the stress of intensive fund-raising, Sister Carol Anne O'Marie, a retired teacher, was advised to take up a hobby. She headed straight for an adult education course in writing.
By the time the course ended, O'Marie had a mystery book in the making, featuring a spunky, 70-something sleuth named Sister Mary Helen. The book, called "A Novena for Murder," was published by Scribner's in 1984, when O'Marie was 51. Seven Sister Mary Helen mysteries have since made it into print, with an eighth due out soon. All O'Marie's book royalties go to her order, St. Joseph of Carondelet, for charitable work.
O'Marie acknowledges the oddity of a nun writing murder mysteries--"I'm like a three-legged duck," she says--but she sees nothing amiss in her pursuit. "A good murder mystery," says O'Marie, "is about the ultimate power play between good and evil. It's today's morality play. The good guy always wins."
O'Marie often speaks about her writing, and it was on her way to an elegant luncheon in San Francisco to give a talk that her career took a new and unexpected direction. "I was late, so I took a shortcut through an alley," says O'Marie. "There were two homeless women there, and one of them was urinating in the street. The difference between the two events overwhelmed me; I couldn't get it out of my mind."
O'Marie's response to the encounter was to team up with Sister Maureen Lyons and establish a drop-in center for homeless women. Called "A Friendly Manor" and located in Oakland, the center serves about 97 women each day. "The goal," says O'Marie, "is to have a safe and respectful place for women." Last year the center became a shelter when it moved to a $2 million renovated building and added 26 one-room apartments. O'Marie juggles a lively schedule: two days a week she works on her mysteries, and two days a week she works at the shelter.
"I sincerely believe that if something is meant to happen, it will," says Sister Carol Anne O'Marie. "Talents are God-given, and they are meant to be shared."
Words of Wisdom:
For others who want to write, O'Marie has some advice. "Read a lot, and write the kind of book you like to read," she says. "Go to a class. Join a writing group for critiques. The pitfalls if you're not sharing your work are that you think either everything is good or nothing is good. The truth is in the middle."
Photo credits L-R: Sherry Sanabria, Cristin Bradley, Cynthia Smalley
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