Madame Author

About Me

I grew up in Weatherford, Oklahoma, and went to the LDS church at what was then a small branch in Clinton. I went to college at the University of Oklahoma, where I met my husband. We were married in the Dallas temple, which was then the closest one to our area. Our son was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. He is very proud of that.

Not long after Kevin was born, we moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, for my husband to attend graduate school, and ended up staying almost nine years after he got a full-time job there. We are now living in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. To be honest, we never expected that we’d end up in Wisconsin, but it’s a nice place and we are enjoying getting to know the people here.

My Writing

Some of my earliest memories are of telling stories to my mom and making her write them down for me. My stories were always about Mary Poppins. Once I saw someone with a broken leg, and that made it into my stories, too. We have a tape recording of me at age 4 telling a story about how Mary Poppins fell on a frog and broke her leg. Fascinating stuff.

When I was six I started writing the story of my life, just like Laura Ingalls Wilder. (Mine was not as interesting as hers.) When I was seven, my dad showed me a story in the Ensign, back when they were still printing fiction, about a girl who wrote stories. (See the July 1977 issue and look for the story "Gert Fram.") The adult aspects of the story were lost on me, but I was enchanted by the idea that a young girl could be such a prolific writer. From that day forward, I started churning out “books,” which were made from folded sheets of paper stapled together. Often I wouldn’t even know what my book would be about until I started writing. Some of the stories actually turned out pretty well. Most of them didn’t. But I kept at it. Few things were more exciting to me than to have an empty “book” in front of me, ready to become whatever I would make of it.

As I grew older, I continued to write, but I also became a lot more self-conscious about what I wrote. The uncertainties of adolescence will do that to you. Eventually I convinced myself that I couldn’t write very well and had nothing interesting to say. I did continue to write occasionally, but that was a deep, dark secret. And I kept a journal. I have some great details from my teenage years that I never would have remembered otherwise.

So how did I get from my paranoid teenage years to being a published author? Well, try as I might, I never could get that writing bug to completely disappear. Fortunately, I made some friends along the way, particularly in college, who also loved to write and helped me remember that I did, too. Placing first in the fiction division of the New Era contest (see the 1992 issue for my story, "Beginning with Joshua") and doing well in some other contests also gave me a little steam to keep going.

And then what did I write my first book about? Paranoid teenagers, of course. ;-)

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“Mormons”) and believe wholeheartedly in its doctrine. If you don’t know whether you believe in God or in a particular faith, I urge you to get on your knees and find out for sure. God will never fail you. If you are interested in learning more about the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, please visit www.mormon.org.

While I don’t necessarily begin my stories with a particular message or agenda in mind, I find that characters, like real people, often learn things along the way. I like being able to integrate my faith and beliefs into my stories, because they are a part of me and they become part of my stories naturally. Eventually I will write for the national market as well; whether any of these stories will contain Latter-day Saint elements remains to be seen. Whatever I write will remain true to good Christian standards. But, above all, I want my readers to enjoy them!