I've always been a word person. I started reading before anyone realized it, least of all me; I still remember the look on my family's faces when I first read aloud from the breakfast menu of a railroad dining car. That was very cool. Writing came later, at my little desk in my little room in Orland Park, Illinois; I was trying to make letters with my left hand when my favorite sitter Henrietta said, "No, sweetie, we write with our right hand."Books were my escape, my passion, my hunger. In elementary school the check-out rule was only two books a week, but I was blessed to have a school librarian who somehow knew I needed more, and let me take home a whole stack every week.After college I got more interested in life than reading, but it wasn't long before I started turning those interests into writing. I'm an incurably curious person, and I love adventure; nothing pleases me more than to have a writing project that calls me out into the world to learn, to experience, and to explore.