It seems like forever that I've wanted to write--to create involved scenarios of other people's lives, to slip them in and out of danger, and eventually get across a few truths I hold dear in the process. Very early in my childhood I fell in love with the magic of storytelling. Fairy stories first--dragons, trolls, witches and wizards. They all seemed entirely plausible. Adventure, romance and the cool literalness of biography came later when I could read for myself. In those influential years, libraries in the small Mormon towns of Utah and Idaho where I lived were my favorite places to hang out.My first novel, Blue Mesa, grew from the loss of a beloved cousin in a drowning accident. There's no bringing back the dead, of course, and I accepted the reality of her dying; I simply needed a way to express what it felt like. Building a story around the cultural images that she and I had shared helped.My second book, The Soul of Frannie Cooper, tells of my great-grandmother, a Mormon woman of the 1800s who left a skeleton in our family closet. The story pulls together historical documents and family hearsays of Francis Cooper Hurst Hawkins whose husband cold-bloodedly murdered a man then vindictively stole Frannie's children when she confessed infidelity. No matter that she'd saved him from a hangman's noose. I think she lied.Books number three and four--Carry the Light and Circle of Light--grew from my meeting a young woman patient in a psych hospital who'd been diagnosed with schizophrenia. She had compelling stories to tell and didn't believe--not for a minute--that she was sick. I often wondered myself. What if she were right.Modoc Summer comes from numerous personal adventures on the Modoc which is currently moored in Alaska. The story is my humble effort to share in fictional form the beauty and grace of a very big boat in a wild and scenic location with the people who keep her afloat.I live in Northwest Montana with my husband, with an Airedale Terrier, Willow, and with the Modoc cat, Miss Kitty, where I continue to write my stories.