I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love to write. When I was a kid, I used to write stories on the scratch paper my father brought home from his office. I wrote about talking pillows and magic spells and whatever else my imagination conjured. In school, I took the first opportunity that came along to enroll in an actual writing class. It was seventh-grade journalism, and I remained involved with newspapers one way or another for the next 40 years.

I grew up in Southern California, in one of those suburban housing tracts that sprang up after World War II to meet the needs of young veterans starting out in their new civilian lives. My father was such a veteran.

I went to several colleges, thanks to fluctuations in our family finances and my oft-changing educational goals, and graduated from California State University, Long Beach with a degree in journalism.

Some years later, parenthood gave me a new direction: I wanted to write children’s books.

A word about that, while I’m on the subject. Writing children’s books takes a lot of work. Don’t believe what you see on TV or in the movies, where someone pulls out a yellow legal pad, scribbles a story about some cute animals, mails it out, and receives a fat check from a publisher two weeks later. It doesn’t work that way. (Celebrity authors are a whole different story – see my Rants, Raves, and Miscellaneous Musings archive.)

With work, though, I found success. My first three books, published in the 1990s, were nonfiction for high school students. They won recognition from the New York Public Library, the Child Study Council, and the Society of School Librarians International. Then I turned to what I really wanted to do, which was write fiction. Happily, that has worked well too. My first novel, a mystery for 8- to 12-year-olds, was “O’Dwyer & Grady Starring in Acting Innocent.” It was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for a 2003 Edgar Allen Poe Award. I followed it with a sequel, “O’Dwyer & Grady Starring in Tough Act to Follow.” (See The Books for reviews and excerpts.)

The other thing parenthood led me into was school volunteering. I’ve spent many hours peddling pizza, chaperoning field trips, proctoring tests, you name it. But I’ve also been able to bring my journalism and writing experience to school. In addition to giving presentations and writing workshops, I shepherded and advised an elementary school student newspaper for two years, then launched a middle school student paper and led that for three years.

These days I’m hard at work finishing up a novel for teens, while I try to decide what project to tackle next. Whenever I can, I dabble in community theatrical ventures. I also do a variety of freelance projects: writing and editing,  conducting residencies and camps, making audio CDs and podcasts. In May, I received my Certificate in Documentary Arts from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. My specialty is audio, and I did my certificate project on a comedy improv troupe called Raleigh’s Village Idiots. I’ll post it here, when I can figure out how. Or you can listen to it on Public Radio Exchange. (While you’re there, check out my interviews with authors Luli Gray and Kelly Starling Lyons.)

I live in Raleigh, N.C., with my marvelous husband and one of my two brilliant and interesting sons.

I look at the world and the people in it, and I see stories everywhere just waiting to be written. That’s the outlook I bring with me when I visit schools – so I can help students open their eyes to the fun they can have when they sit down to write.