Stephanie Grace Whitson has made a career out of playing with imaginary friends, and it all started in an abandoned pioneer cemetery. This one's graves are scattered on a tiny corner of land near where the Whitson family lived in the 1990s. That cemetery provided not only a hands-on history lesson for Stephanie's four home schooled children but also a topic of personal study as she began to read about and be encouraged by the pioneer women who settled the American West. Since writing had always been a favorite hobby, it was only natural for her to begin jotting down scenes in the life of a nameless woman crossing Nebraska on the Oregon Trail. Eventually that story took on a life of its own and Stephanie sent off a query letter--expecting instant rejection.God had a different plan. He blessed Stephanie's beginnings, putting two of her three first books on the ECPA best-seller list and making two of her first nine books finalists for the Christy Award. More recently (in 2012) she received Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award for Best Inspirational Romance. In addition to writing (she has authored more than two dozen books), Stephanie loves antique quilts and pioneer women's history and riding her Honda Magna motorcycle named Kitty. A lifelong student, she earned her Master of Arts degree in history in 2012."The flip side of writing," Stephanie says, "is being asked to teach writing and/or speak at various church and community events." She has developed a menu of lectures and workshops that "provide opportunities for me to travel and get to know not only other writers and history lovers, but also students and quilters. I love sequestering myself in a library to do research, but the speaking part of my career has provided some unique and wonderful memories." And then there's Kitty, the Honda Magna. "In some ways I'm 60," she says, "in others I'm probably about 26. It all depends on the day." On days when her virtual age leans toward the younger side of that equation, she's been known to wake up in the morning and decide to ride Kitty to Canada. And then she comes home and descends to "the catacombs" (the basement office in her Victorian-era house) and heads back into the past to play with more imaginary friends.