The nightmares made living without sleep a welcome alternative. She didn't always remember the specifics, but the terror often clung to her well into her waking hours. She could never explain to him how sleeping only made her feel smothered.Īnd gave her nightmares. She shook her head, fighting the chronic fatigue she'd learned to live with over the past year. She hated that her troubles had such an effect on Grey. She'd tried, but the night had pressed in around her. 'I'm up.'Ĭoncern quickened Claire's pulse. The door cracked open and Grey peered at her, his auburn hair sticking out at odd angles. Shuffling sounded through the door, along with a couple of muffled expletives. We're out of here in twenty minutes,' she said. The ever-present thudding of her heart sounded in her ears. Claire Murphy pounded again on her ten-year-old son's door. The TV weatherman's smooth, loud tones predicted rain for metropolitan Atlanta, while the computer speakers in the home office blared Iron Maiden and the old DVD player in the kitchen cranked Judas Priest. When she isn't writing, she home schools her children and, with the help of a wonderful group of people, is working toward building a holistic school in her area. She now resides in Roswell, Georgia, a suburb of metro-Atlanta, with her husband, three daughters, and a big cat. Even then it took about five years of juggling husband, children, and nonprofit work with her writing before she finally mastered the art of rejection and landed her first sale. Over the years she followed the muse from time to time, but didn't get serious about writing until after her third child's birth. Unfortunately, Dorie took the magazine's request to shorten the story as a flat rejection.

That attempt resulted in her teacher reading her work aloud to the class, then submitting her story to Highlights magazine. Dorie was initially struck by the writing muse at the tender age of nine, when she stayed up past her bedtime for the first time ever to finish a short story.

Espresso in the Morning by Dorie Graham