On my mother's side of the family, I come from a line of storytellers. My grandmother's stories ranged from my grandfather's arrest for draft resistance in England during World War I, the uncertainty of life during the Troubles in Ireland, to the day she decided to leave her marriage (but didn't). My mother's stories described a rural childhood that to a child of a suburb of little boxes seemed idyllic. Both of them encouraged me to read and provided me with books to feed a growing habit. When I was seven or eight, I discovered mythology, and the gods and goddesses in those tales were as real to me as the dragons and cats in my own stories are now. Thanks to my early training in fantasy, I like to hang out with dragons. Accepting the bizarre directions my imagination takes has allowed me to conjure up Zen cats, cougars, gossip-vending hawks, and other critters. Currently I live in upstate New York on a wooded piece of land not unlike some of the terrain in Big Dragons Don't Cry. Since 2000 I've belonged to the online writers' group, Artistic License, subtitled Shameless Blameless Hussies. They've read all my books, but don't blame them if you find errors, because they're shameless. I also paint, and the art on my book cover is one of my watercolors.
