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Website: http:/www.sherylmcfarlane.ca

"Some people paint with words, or with music, or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, 'I've never seen anyone run like that before." This is a quote from one of the all time great US track athletes that inspires the main character in my my latest novel, The Smell of Paint. Years as a track mom also helped inspire the story and the picture on the left shows me sandwiched between two of my daughters who are track athletes and helped me with the track details in the book

Although I’ve written thirteen books, including my latest novel, The Smell of Paint, Waiting for the Whales and Jessie’s Island, I was never the sort of kid you’d imagine becoming a writer when they grew up. I didn’t even read much until I hit my teen years. I was too busy building forts in the cotton wood trees that lined the irrigation ditch near my home, playing hide & seek in the orange groves and cotton fields, playing pick-up baseball with the neighborhood kids, or building skateboards out of discarded baby carriage wheels and scrap wood.

Junior high opened up a whole new and unexpected world for me; the world of books. For the first time, I stepped beyond the boundaries of my neighborhood, and I loved it. I traveled to distant places, met fascinating people, and lived in a multitude of pasts and a wealth of possible futures. I was convinced that authors must be an exotic species indeed, to be able to achieve such feats of wonder.

I kept my poetry journal secret from my brothers since I knew that if they found it, they would tease me. It never occurred to me that I might myself someday become an author. It wasn’t until I was in my early thirties that I began to try writing for others instead of just for myself. Like most other authors, my stories were rejected many times before my first book was published. Now, I know there is nothing in the world that I would rather do than write books.

I still love to curl up with a good book and sometimes get so involved with a story that I forget to cook dinner! Check out my kids book review blog at www.readingkidsbooks.blogspot.com

Now, when I’m not writing, I have the perfect excuse for hiking, kayaking, gardening, and walking the fabulous west coast beaches near my home. “It’s research,” I tell everyone. After all, these are the places and things that help to inspire the stories I write.

My other titles include: Eagle Dreams, Moonsnail Song, Tides of Change, This is the Dog, A Pod of Orcas, Going to the Fair, a 4 board books in the What's That Sound? series.

Website: http:/www.sherylmcfarlane.ca
"Some people paint with words, or with music, or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, 'I've never seen anyone run like that before." This is a quote from one of the all time great US track athletes that inspires the main character in my my latest novel, The Smell of Paint. Years as a... More