I loved books about horses and dogs and the old West. When I was very small and people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, "A horse." I wished I had been born 100 years earlier, when everyone lived on a ranch and rode a horse. I was the only one in my family that loved horses, or any kind of animals. I loved horses, books, and playing the piano. I read many of my favorite books over and over, maybe 10 or 15 times. My mom worried about my strange way of entertaining friends I invited over. I'd say, "What do you what to do? Read?" And then we'd sit and read books in silence for hours! I also loved to work crossword puzzles. That helped me learn my way around a dictionary and a thesaurus, and increased my vocabulary, which all fueled my interest in words and writing.

When I got married and had two little boys, my desire was that they would also learn to love books. I read them all the Mother Goose rhymes and all the Laura books before they were 2 years old. We read them over and over. I read to them maybe 1-2 hours a day until they started school. Besides giving them many books to read, I continued to read them books out loud until they were maybe 10 years old. That way they could enjoy stories that were too difficult for them to read themselves. We read all the Narnia books out loud. In school, they both excelled in reading and writing. (Good readers make good writers.)

We lived far from town, in rural Nevada. The bookmobile would come twice a month and stop in front of our house. I would check out a grocery sack full of books each time, for myself, my husband, and the boys. Often I'd read them books that would make me think, "I could do better than THIS!" When I saw ads in magazines saying "learn to write children's books," I'd think, "That's what I want to do. Someday I will write children's books."

When I first started to write books, I didn't have an office or a computer. I sat on my bed and scribbled, or sat at the kitchen table with my electric typewriter. We bought a used computer for our kids; at first neither my husband or I had the slightest interest in learning to use it ourselves. I didn't think I would be able to write on it even if I learned to use it. But a year or two later, I did learn, and I did write on it, and wondered how I ever got along without it. I took a course in writing for children and managed to sell a number of stories and articles to magazines such as Boys' Life, Hopscotch, Crusader, Junior Trails, Guide, Teens Today, as well as an article which appeared in Horse and Horseman.

Then I decided I was ready to try a book. I was interested in the creation/evolution debate and had been following it for years. When I started writing a book on evolution, I had serious doubts that I would be able to find a publisher, because of the subject matter. I ended up publishing it on my website, because I was more interested in sharing my ideas than in getting paid for it.