Madeline Ann Balch McDougal was born in 1922. Her mother, Catherine Ann Balch, died in childbirth when Madeline was 5, and she grew up using her mother's maiden name. She graduated both from Michigan State College with a bachelor's degree in Chemistry, and also from the School of Nursing at Sparrow Hospital. James Gilmore Tabler married Madeline in 1946, and the couple had two children, Michael and Joseph. The family moved to San Diego in 1952.

While in San Diego, Tabler's interest in writing led her to take writing classes from Paul D. Perry in Coronado, eventually teaching some classes herself. In the late 1950s and 1960s she authored articles for the Pacific Beach Sentinel under the pseudonym Clementine Cartwright. Tabler was an early member of Chet Cunningham's San Diego Writer's Workshop, started in the 1960s. She published several nurse novels, works of juvenile and young adult literature, soap opera novels, ghost-authored at least one novel (a western for Chet Cunningham), wrote several short stories, articles, and poems. She also wrote several unpublished mysteries and romances.

Aside from her professional and personal writing, she was involved in the community. She was a member of the Clairemont Woman's Club, the PTA, and taught community children to swim in the Backyard Swim Program in Bay Park. Other hobbies included knitting and needlepoint, swimming, bicycling, and yoga, which she continued after being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and Alzheimer's Disease. She died in 2002.