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mom would laugh and say, “That’s exactly what my parents always

said to me when I was a kid!

The people I met in books always seemed very real to me: as a kid, I counted among my friends the whip-smart New York kids of E.L. Konigsburg books, Harriet the Spy, Anne of Green Gables, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Anne Frank, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Little Princess’ Sara Crewe, L.M. Montgomery’s Emily Byrd Starr, Beanie Malone

I did major in creative writing, but I also majored in journalism (and history, just for fun). Except for the summer after my freshman year of college, when I worked as

at a 4-H camp (which was lots and lots of fun), every job I’ve held since then has been related to writing in some way.

an assistant coo

I worked on my school newspaper and had summer internships at newspapers in Urbana, Ohio; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Indianapolis, Indiana. After college,

then quickly moved back to Indianapolis to work as a newspaper reporter there.

But a few went for the fantastical.

When my daughter was in third grade, she brought home a list one day that described what everyone in her class wanted to be when they grew up

ay that described what everyone in her class wanted to be when they grew up. Most of

I come from both a long line of farmers, and a long line of bookworms.

nurses (like my mom)

One kid said he wanted to be a spy; another was longing to be a professional dirt-biker; another saw himself as a future movie director. And I looked at that list and thought, “Yep, I’m with the dirt-biker and the spy.”

farmers (like my dad

  I grew up on a farm about halfway between two small towns: Washington Court House, Ohio, and Sabina, Ohio.

   As a kid, I also longed for a career that I didn’t actually believe real people got to do. The far-out, only-in-your dreams career I wanted was to be an author.

“Would you guys stop reading for a minute and look out the window? That’s the Grand Canyon we’re driving past!

How many of my ancestors, immigrating to America, had to admonish their kids, “Would you put down that book and look out? Don’t you want to see our new home?”

To me, it didn’t seem to be much of a step to go from loving books to wanting to create books of my own

The people I met in books always seemed very real to me: as a kid, I counted among my friends the whip-smart New York kids of E.L. Konigsburg books, Harriet the Spy, Anne of Green Gables, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Anne Frank, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Little Princess’ Sara Crewe, L.M. Montgomery’s Emily Byrd Starr, Beanie Malone, and many, many others.

One kid said he wanted to be a spy; another was longing to be a professional dirt-biker; another saw himself as a future movie director. And I looked at that list and thought, “Yep, I’m with the dirt-biker and the spy.”

and did volunteer work through my church and 4-H clubs.

Washington Court House, Ohio, and Sabina, Ohio.

indow?

(Lest you think I was some multi-talented prodigy, I should point out that I’m a terrible singer, a terrible actor, and, as a runner, I’m really, really good at walking

One of the advantages of going to a fairly small school is that, if you’re not too afraid of making a fool of yourself, they’ll let you try just about any activity.

) In college, one of the best things I did was spend a semester studying in Luxembourg, a small country nestled between France, Germany and Belgium.

fairly small school is that, if you’r

But it was being a reporter that really gave me the opportunity to meet lots of different people, in vastly different circumstances. It never failed to amaze me that I could sit down with people, and begin asking really, really nosy questions, and because I was from the newspaper, they would almost always answer.

events, all at once.)

or most of my time as a journalist, I worked as a general assignment report

characters and settings in my head. Facts weren’t enough for me. I still als

Somehow, for me, hearing so many different stories from so many different people--and witnessing so many different events--didn’t just inspire me to write it all down

ould go home and also write different kinds of stories, ones based mo

. So during this time, I had a lot more ideas for fiction than I actually wrote down.

  It was also during this time that I got married. My husband, Doug, and I met in college, and he also went into journalism right after school.

When he got a job as city editor of a newspaper in Danville, Illinois, it seemed like a big complication for my career. If I wanted to continue

as a newspaper reporter, I knew I’d probably have to have my husband as a boss.

My husband and I agreed to see this complication as an opportunity: this would be my chance to concentrate on fiction

. I took part-time jobs teaching writing at a community college and doing freelance business writing, but I also wrote Running Out of Time; Don’t You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey; and numerous short stories. While I was working on those, my husband and I also decided to start a family.

Like most writers, I went through an agonizing phase of submitting my work and collecting nothing but rejection letters for quite a while

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Still, it was a little challenging to be a newly published author at the same time that I was becoming a new mother.

For those first few years, I wrote only during my kids’ naptime, when I probably should have been napping myself.

   Since then, my life has changed quite a bit. My husband and kids and I moved from Illinois to Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, to Columbus, Ohio

    And that’s why I became a writer.

In a hurry? See a short biography. Writing a Report

Start Here

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