Deena is a widow living in Tigard, Oregon. She has three sons, nine grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Following her twenty-five-year business career in workers' compensation claims administration, besides going back to college receiving her BA degree in English Literature and Writing, she devoted herself to a second marriage to Donald Lindstedt living in Cannon Beach, Oregon. Following Don's death in 2014, she moved to Tigard, Oregon to be closer to family. She is kept busy with her writing a member of P.E.O. and a bridge player.

Lady of the Play was an early 2022 award winner with Firebird Book Awards. Other fiction honors include third place winner for a poem: Two Ladies of Chedigny for Willamette Writers, Portland. Finalist for short story: Simply to Fly for NW Writers Association contest in Seattle. She presented a paper at the Virginia Woolf Conference, Lewis and Clark University and a guest speaker at the 2011 Shakespeare Authorship Symposium delivering her paper, Shakespeare, Perhaps a Woman.

She has revised her book, Deception Cove, now available as the first of the Meredith Maxwell Mystery series. She is currently writing the second book of the series, titled, Betrayal Bay.