I didn’t think writing my first novel at ten years old was anything extraordinary. Only when I had my own ten-year-olds did I realize that writing a twenty-five page novel out long hand just for fun at that age was weird.
           After serving as 6th grade editor of the school newspaper, my family moved from quiet New Jersey suburbs across the Delaware River from Philadelphia to wild and woolly Utah. Twelve years old and nearly six feet tall, I started my first day of rural junior high school wearing big city fashions, which made several classmates mistake me for a substitute teacher!
           In high school, I worked on the paper staff, as editor of the “Write” magazine, and had my first publication in a national anthology. At college, I told the Miss Snow College Pageant judges I would be a
published author some day. They believed me, awarded me the crown, and my parents cheered for the scholarship that came with it. Using a second scholarship as editor of the college newspaper, I boogied down my sophomore year with my tenor sax in jazz band. The best thing about that year was tall, dark, handsome Robert Bahlmann, whom I married the day before college graduation.
          My stacks of journals, road shows, plays, and skits attest to the fact that I’ve been writing all my life, but I finally got past the “fear” when I came home late one winter night after work and the youngest of my six sons ran out on the snowy porch in bare feet and saggy diaper calling “Mommy! Mommy!” At that point, I realized I needed to stay home for my family, so I began writing with a vengeance. I teach writing classes to children and adults and have written more than twenty books in ten years. Even unpredictable royalties can't stop the hunger of my soul to write as intently as my body craves food. I’m too impatient to wait for the Muse. I just begin writing, and she gets curious and comes to look over my shoulder!