About Me

I am
born. I decide to be a writer. I write long letters to friends.

I go to college. I write plays. I graduate. I move to Texas. I write more plays. I win an award. I write a movie. I don’t win an award. I write feature articles for newspapers and magazines. One of them wins an award.

I become a mom. I win the love lottery. I write a children’s book. It gets great reviews. I win an award. I decide every day to be a writer. I am very happy.

The day I decided
to be a writer was a rainy day at the beach when I was ten or eleven. Rainy days at the beach in the summer can make anyone feel a little bit out of sorts, but I was feeling particularly odd because nothing felt right. Playing dolls was starting to feel too babyish. I’d redecorated the blanket fort in my room about fifteen times. I’d read every book and comic book in the house. And when I went to see what mom and dad and three older sisters were up to, they were playing bridge and drinking Bloody Marys. I definitely didn’t fit there. So I went back to my fort, found a blank piece of paper and started writing. The world was going to be re-explained by me so that everyone could see it from my perspective.

First I wrote long letters to friends. Really long letters to friends. Snail Mail. They wrote me back. This satisfied me for years.

Then I went to Hampshire College and I took a Playwriting class from Len Berkman at Smith College. He was unlike any professor I had ever had: long grey hair, tied in a ponytail, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Len was the guy that opened the door to the writer’s tool shed. (I thought it was a secret club that Norman Mailer asked you to join.) I learned about character motivation, conflict, building scenes and denouement. Because of Len, I majored in theatre arts and decided to graduate by writing plays. I assembled a committee of professors to guide me in my study of theatre and theatrical writing. I read what seemed like every play ever written. I wrote scenes, one acts and eventually graduated with the production of a full-length play, called A Christmas Ritual. While the play was never produced again, it did help a lighting design student in a playwriting class at the University of Texas graduate. I like to tell people that I didn’t go to the University but my play did.

Just how the road I was traveling led from Massachusetts to Texas is something that I think happens in your 20’s. You meet someone. You fall in love. Suddenly one right turn later, you’re in Texas, which, just one minute before, seemed like the end of the earth. But now it’s paradise. So you put down roots. You grow up. You have to do it somewhere. I’m really glad I got to do it in Austin.

I got a job at a theatre. I made friends. Pretty soon those friends and I were writing and producing and even acting (yes, briefly) in plays. Eventually, I wrote a pretty good play called The Miracle of Washing Dishes. It ran for a year in Austin, won an award for Best Original script and went to a new play festival in New York.

After that, I was asked to write a straight-to-video kind of movie, which led to writing a feature article for the Austin Chronicle about that experience, which led to a regular feature writing gig, first at the Austin Chronicle (a weekly) and then later at the Austin American Statesman (a daily). What I loved about journalism was being able to find out what different people did in the world so I could tell their stories. Being a reporter led to a trip to Cuba where I fell in love with a Cuban journalist, which led to becoming a mother.

Suddenly interviewing prostitutes, cops, wayward millionaires and boxers held zero appeal. I was in love with my daughter. Her birth announcement read: “I had no idea this much love is possible.” I didn’t. My mom was a manager. A really good one. But I was the youngest of four kids and there wasn’t a whole lot of lovey-dovey snuggly stuff going on. She had laundry to do.

So there I was all goo-goo by the side of road, in love with my daughter and in love with growing up all over again. This time more slowly and deliberately as her guide. Of course, children’s books were a significant part of our love affairs. I read my daughter all the Caldecotts. After she went to bed, I read all the Newberys.

One day, I tried my hand at a picture book (Snuggle Mountain) and, lo and behold, it was published (Clarion, 2003). It was luck. Yes, it was a good idea. Yes it had imagination and plot. But I didn’t know beans about the craft of children’s literature. And I sure didn’t know much about the business. That’s okay. A bit of luck and serendipity often leads us to the best places.

And that’s where I am now. I live in Austin with my daughter and our two dogs and two cats. I write children’s books. I also write a family column for Good Life magazine. I no longer think that the world needs to be re-explained by me. But I do make the decision every day to write and tell stories because I love to express myself that way.

Oh and rainy days at the beach no longer make me feel out of sorts. In fact, they are some of my favorite times at the beach.

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