I’ve always loved books and stories, and I began dreaming of writing my own stories at an early age. I grew up in a small town with limited book resources – the elementary school library and the tiny room above City Hall, which volunteers from the Women’s Club stocked with used books and maintained. 

My favorite day of the week was when the Bookmobile came to town; I walked home with as many books as I could carry each week and devoured them one by one. I loved words: I kept notebooks, and still do, of my favorite ones, whether because of their melodic or powerful sounds or because I found their meanings interesting. In high school, I thought I had found my niche when I found myself in Ivy Hawkins’ creative writing class. She taught me more about language and writing in a nine-week period than I had learned in my life. More than anything else, she taught me to love writing. She introduced me to real literature and taught me a true appreciation for fine writing.

One day, someone said, “Oh, by the way, you have to make a living,” and I began to look at reading and writing as a hobby and set my concentration on building a career. In 1982, I attended the FAA Academy and went through air traffic controller training, the path which I followed until I retired as an Operations Supervisor on my fiftieth birthday, January 3, 2007. Now I am free to concentrate on writing again. The challenge is to remind my fifty-year-old brain what the spark of creativity feels like, after all those years of technical thought and sterile communication. Perhaps I need to go out and meet another 1000-year-old elephant.