Welcome

Yes, Echo is my real name. No, my parents weren’t hippies. My dad, Bob Montgomery, started out in a teenage rockabilly duo called Buddy and Bob in Lubbock, Texas. I was born the year after his best friend Buddy Holly died, and Dad named me after Buddy’s old girlfriend, Echo. My dad wrote songs, produced music and eventually opened his own publishing company on Music Row in Nashville, so I grew up knowing that you could make a living from words. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 25 years.

When sending queries to editors in New York City from our newlywed nest on Chicken Road in Lebanon, Tennessee, proved less than successful, my husband Kevin Garrett and I loaded up a truck and moved to the Big Apple. I figured the best way to break into the magazine business was to become an editor. I worked at McCall’s and Venture (a business magazine that competed with Inc.) before going freelance in 1988.

Since then I’ve written for more than 75 national magazines, newspapers and websites. I’ve also written or ghostwritten several books. A former contributing writer to Money, Business Week, Management Review, Investor’s Business Daily, and The Atlanta Business Chronicle, I’ve been interviewed on Good Morning America, CNBC, CNN, NY-1 and have done more than 50 radio interviews supporting book projects and magazine articles. I was a founding editor of biztravel.com and served as editor-in-chief of Atlanta Woman magazine. I also write annual reports and brochures for corporations and non-profits.

I love writing about business (especially profiles of entrepreneurs); the environment; consumer issues; health; home design and gardening; women’s issues; and travel (luxury, romance, family, eco-friendly and soft adventure). Lately, I’ve been concentrating on my book projects and enjoying life working from home in Marietta, Georgia, with Kevin, a photographer (www.kevingarrett.com), and our teenage son Connor. Our oldest son Caleb is a junior at the University of Montana. I just launched the Orange Duffel Bag Foundation (www.OrangeDuffelBagFoundation.org ) which is dedicated to providing life skills education and support for youth living in foster care, aging out of foster care, and for homeless youth. Our dream is to make the orange duffel bag a symbol of hope for at risk youth like the pink ribbon is for breast cancer.