I was an artist before I was a writer. Although I loved both from the first kid's book I held in my chubby four-year-old hands. I had my first library card at five and remember vividly the one-room building with the big iron woodstove always filled and burning during the cold winter months. The librarian with the missing middle finger, who could rifle through her index cards faster than I could change my mind, demanded silence and promptness. 

I wanted desperately to understand the words, but without a teacher, that had to wait until I entered school when I was six. By the end of that year, I read my first chapters book. I can't remember a time in my life I haven't had a book in front of me. 

I wasn't born in a liberated era, but in a time when parents were right about everything and children were seen but not heard. Thus my love of books where my imagination had no boundaries.  

Reading, writing and art carried me through school. I mostly ignored math and science. 

Four years of art school led to an early career in commercial art. But I was the cliche starving artist. It was then that I met my husband to be. Marriage and babies delayed any further career plans.