“Just remember that Dumbo didn’t need the feather;

the magic was in him.”

Stephen King, On Writing

Welcome to the online home for my work. I’m Amy McVay Abbott, a Midwestern writer. The Stephen King quote speaks to my passion for words. Here I celebrate and honor a love of words. Please visit the different sections of my site, above, and at right.

• Check out my photography books on the Photo Books page.
• Discover in “Books” if the Rolling Stones performed at dawn in my neighbor’s yard.
• Visit a Tuscan winery with me in “Gallery.”
• Read my background information in “About.”
• Visit “The Raven Lunatic” and imagine why the voices in my head put a cat’s hairballs and the Pensive Dane in the same article.

I’ve been writing all my life and studied journalism in college. My first job as a writer took me in an unexpected direction into healthcare. With more responsibility, I moved farther and farther away from creativity. In 2009, I started writing a column for my hometown paper, where I also interned in college. “The Raven Lunatic,” my column, spread to a dozen Indiana newspapers and today is repped by Senior Wire News Service.  The “Raven” part is a nod to the famous poem because my middle name lost the lost loved one is LeNore. Senior Wire also carries a second column called “A Healthy Age.”

I’ve published four compilations of my essays, Whitley County Kid, A Piece of Her Heart, A Piece of Her Mind, and The Luxury of Daydreams.  I’ve also published several books of my photography. With my husband, we wrote a silly cat book under a nom de plume.  Look hard and you’ll find “The Many Moods of Fala Jo” on Amazon.

Words. Magic. Quoth the raven. Forevermore.