Author biographies are supposed to give you all those statistics, books written, awards won, etc. and I will, I promise...but first let me tell you about this ornery little tomboy (back then, the boys had all the fun...) who was always the one to make up the stories the neighborhood kids would play. For those who came of age in the computer game era, this is something that was done usually in the backyard, by any number of summer-bored children, with props where appropriate. (Did you know a 55 gallon drum tied to a picnic bench makes a very cool horse?) It wasnt until much later that this tomboy realized two things: A) not everyone made up stories in their heads all the time, and B) in real life, the boys that had already had all the fun now seemed to always be winning.

But I digress. I was born on a farm down in Iowa....well, not quite, but close; Boone, Iowa is in the middle of farm country, but I arrived at a hospital. In a snow storm. Make that a blizzard. My sister tells me she knew my destiny when I was very young, because when I first saw the Disney classic Old Yeller, I was apparently so upset that I promptly went home and rewrote the story. In my version, the dog lived, of course. Should have been a clue.

Possibly in response to that blizzard I was born in, Ive been a West Coaster since before I was a year old, and intend to stay that way. I have a history of staying. I started my first full time job right out of school (well, there was a very brief sojourn at a place where they made, among other things, burial vaults, but I prefer not to recall that one...) and stayed for twenty-one years. Ive been married to the same wonderful guy for going on two decades now. We lived in our last house for seventeen years. (I wont even mention how many dumpsters we filled moving after that long....)

Readers seem as fascinated by my first career as they are with my writing. My time in law enforcement was many things, exciting, nerve wracking, and irri