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I was born in a trailer in High Rolls, New Mexico, in 1958. My parents, who were not very practical people, neglected to go to the hospital or inform anyone of my arrival, so some Official Document Confusion existed for a long time as to the exact year and date.

By my sixth birthday, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a writer. I was fascinated by the sound of words, the sweep of story. I wanted to make word magic and tuck it inside the covers of a book. So I found a pencil and tried my hand at literature:

I feer a dere is neer heer.
k- age 6

It had drama. It had emotion. It failed to impress the critics.

In retrospect, it would have been more sensible to fear a bear or a mountain lion, but I was reaching for the stars. I wanted rhyming drama. It was only the first of many, many literary lessons learned from rejection.

A writer needs a very tough skin. And she needs something to write about.

Fortunately, my impractical parents were also quite eccentric. My childhood can only be described as ‘exciting.’

I tracked caribou and arctic wolves across my family’s homestead in Alaska, caught tiny tree frogs in the swamps and rain forests of the Pacific Northwest, and chased dust devils and rattlesnakes across the high desert of New Mexico.

Against all odds, I survived many misadventures. I was not electrocuted or drowned. Most of the bullets missed, and the incidents with bears, snakes, wolves, and angry moose were not fatal.

Before I settled down to have children I worked as a ranch hand, a wood cutter, a lumberjack, a census taker, a wrangler for wilderness guides, and an archeological surveyor.

Now that my children are all grown and off on their own adventures, I write full time. And I still like my drama to rhyme!

I was born in a trailer in High Rolls, New Mexico, in 1958. My parents, who were not very practical people, neglected to go to the hospital or inform anyone of my arrival, so some Official Document Confusion existed for a long time as to the exact year and date. By my sixth birthday, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a writer. I was fascinated by the sound of words, the ... More