Gretchen spent many years working in the fields of education and travel. Her parents had always encouraged her to write, but she waited until she heard “you are a writer” from more trustworthy advisors: a London psychic, and a taxicab driver in Athens, Greece. The taxicab driver also said they had been lovers in a previous life.

Gretchen wrote a travel-focused blog for several years, before moving to the Middle East to teach English as a Second Language. Her humorous memoir about the eighteen months she spent living in Iraq was published in 2012 (I Have Iraq in My Shoe, Sourcebooks).

After the memoir, Gretchen turned her focus to the field of genealogy, spending hours in dusty file rooms of county courthouses and town clerk offices, and rainy afternoons trudging through muddy cemeteries. She compiled narratives and research reports for clients, while also working on her family's history. One surprising bit of information sparked an idea that eventually became her debut novel, The OPERATOR (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2020).