Mom Interviews

A former television reporter and producer, she met her husband, Dennis Ferrier, at the NBC affiliate in Nashville, Tennessee, where they both worked, and has crafted a career as a writer while focusing on her life as a mom and step mom. "I have two stepdaughters, ages 18 and 15 (whom I call 18 and 15 on my blog, since they're a little too old to appreciate cutesy online nicknames), a daughter I call Punky in my writing who's four, and a son I call Bruiser, who is 1 1/2." She lives with her family in Nashville.

You're everywhere! Tell us a bit about your blogs.

Suburban Turmoil is my personal blog, my space to write about whatever I want, whenever I want.

The Blender is my blog at Parents.com. It's somewhat focused on blended-family issues, but it's so tough to write about teenagers while still respecting their privacy that I often use the space as a chance to write about some of my family's experiences that I don't want to forget.

My other main writing gigs are as a weekly columnist for the Nashville City Paper and the Louisville Eccentric Observer. The column is based on my Suburban Turmoil blog. And I just started writing a bi-weekly beauty column for Her Nashville Magazine. I get to try out beauty trends and services and write about them, which is a lot of fun!

When did you start blogging and why?

I started blogging in 2005, when Punky was a year old. I had been writing essays on being a new mom and submitting them to parenting magazines -- and I was getting rejection slips over and over again.

I thought the essays were pretty good, but I wondered if my writing sucked and I was the only person who didn't know it. So I started a blog to find out, and to discipline myself to write during Punky's naptime every day. I figured if the blog posts were bad, anyone who happened across it online would have ample opportunity to tell me so, and I'd give up my dreams of being a writer. Fortunately (for me, anyway), that didn't happen.

You used to write Suburban Turmoil under a pseudonym, Lucinda Ferrara. When did you start using your real name instead, and what made you decide to do so?