Let's see... The first time I wrote something that got anyone's attention was in the first or second grade when I wrote and illustrated a small, stapled-paper booklet parodying the boring "See Spot Run" readers. Let's just say that the final scene, "See Spot go SPLAT!" had teachers and school counselors concerned. My mother, however, understood immediately that she had a little bitty satirist in the making. A couple of years later, I won some kind of national recognition for poetry. I forgot which one or if it was any good, but my poem showed up in a Scholastic magazine, so that was a thrill. Published before puberty!
I grew up on Narnia, Oz, Erma Bombeck's comic essays, Isaac Asimov's science fiction, and Agatha Christie's mysteries. I also watched a lot of Monty Python's Flying Circus and the old black-and-white Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes episodes. It's fair to say that my writing reflects that early, eclectic literary diet.
By late grade school, I was helping to write sketches that my friends and I presented to our classmates. That grew into about thirty years of writing on-demand scripts for everything from pep assemblies and camp talent shows to Christmas narrations and a one-act musical for the Children's Educational Theater in Salem, Oregon.
In all of those years, I never successfully wrote either a short story or a novel. I thought in scripts.
Then I had a dream. (Doesn't that sound romantic?) I woke up with a few characters, a setting, and a very loose premise. For nine months, I wrote, and eventually birthed my debut novel--a fantasy. I'm still very proud of the story itself, but after a couple of years, I pulled it from the sales outlets because I knew I could do much better. But by then, I was hooked on the therapeutic adventure that is writing novels.
And--no surprise--my novels contain a lot of dialogue. I still think in scripts. I hear my characters talking, scheming, hoping, snarking, and struggling, and I just take dictation and fix their punctuation along the way.
I'm now retired (former high school English teacher and martial arts instructor) and living in my old college town again with my awesome educator husband, my wily and fun pre-schooler, and two cats (one cuddly, one cowardly). My two adult children make me proud all the time, but I wish they didn't live so far away. Until that toddler is in school all day, my writing window is mostly relegated to his nap time, but I've learned to type quickly, so I plan to keep churning out books. The ideas keep coming even if laundry and sleep still beckon.
I'll probably even revisit that original novel and expand it into a series. I've had a very long time to think of related story threads, after all. Some day. Not yet. For now, check the "In the Works" tab for what's occupying my writing time nowadays.