Author

Paula’s Story

Paula Stahel fell in love with reading before the age of four, and soon thought only men wrote stories. Then one day, when she was five, she saw Superman on television and three epiphanies struck: Lois Lane was a reporter; Lois Lane was a woman; women could be writers! From that moment on, that’s what she was determined to become.

Paula’s first foray into the “profession” was in third grade, when she convinced her elementary school principal to start a school paper. Later, she was on the newspaper staff in high school. Adulthood took her a different path, though, before she decided to follow her true calling. Her career took off after moving to Tampa, where she talked her way into a job with the local newspaper, then became associate editor of two city magazines and managing editor of a state-wide scientific journal. All the while she was freelancing articles and raising a young son, which led to another realization: If she was going to work that much, she’d work for herself. She became an independent writer and editor, and has never looked back.

She has co-authored several books, contributed to anthologies, ghostwritten for experts in a variety of professions, taught memoir writing, presented at numerous writers’ conferences, and published a book on interviewing for life stories. She also edits fiction and nonfiction for other authors.

Born and raised in southwest Michigan, Paula’s summers while growing up were spent on Big Manistique Lake in the Upper Peninsula, where her family built and operated a popular resort, which provides a fictional setting for Undone—A Novel of Betrayal.

“Novels about divorce and betrayal abound,” she says. “Novels about husbands leading double lives are usually about his having a secret family. The betrayal I write about isn’t that. Yet no matter how a woman is wronged by the man she loves, she wishes for revenge—a satisfying revenge she rarely gets. For years I looked for that book, but never found it. So I did as Toni Morrison suggested: I wrote the book I wanted to read.”