I was born in Louisiana while my dad was stationed at Barksdale Air Force base in Bossier City. We returned to Michigan a couple of years later. I grew up outside of Brighton, Michigan. I was a wild child, running barefoot outside under old oaks and young evergreens. I called the woods behind our house the Lullaby Forest because of the sound the wind made as it wound its way through the woods. I talked to the trees, birds, and my invisible friends. I also read almost constantly and began creating stories by drawing pictures and making them into tiny books before I could read.
Once I could read and write, I began writing stories. In school, for extra credit, I’d beg the teachers to let me write stories. They were usually horse stories. Later horses faded into the background and boys began making appearances, usually in stories that happened at the end of the world. That was probably because I loved watching old B science fiction movies; then I would write about what happened after the end of the movie.
I loved fairy tales and history books. When I was in elementary school, I read any books with horses in them. I also made up a new world—complete with a galaxy map—where women and girls ruled and had magical powers. (Boys and men did not have any power.) I was merely a visitor to Earth pretending to be an Earth girl, along with my friends who were also pretending. We were gathering information about Earth people. At recess we ran outside into the fields behind our school and fought evil magicians and our archenemy (who was from our home planet). One time the magicians took away our voices, and when we went back to school, we couldn’t talk. We drove our teacher crazy. (Literally, the poor guy had a nervous breakdown before the year was out.) Of course these adventures were based on stories I wrote.
When I was growing up, I wanted to be a writer. In high school, I put away my other galaxy and became an Earth girl full time. I planned to go to college and become a lawyer. It seemed too impractical and difficult to make a living as a writer.
I started college at Michigan State University, but I didn’t like it and left after a few days. I ended up getting my BS and MA from Eastern Michigan University. I started out wanting to go into child psychology, but that didn’t last. I went back to writing. I took a journalism class and worked as a writer for our university newspaper. I eventually became an editor of our literary magazine and my focus shifted to fiction writing.
I took many writing classes. My professors were encouraging but practical: Being a writer was no way to make a living. After all, none of them had done it. One of my professors, Dr. George Perkins, encouraged me to start submitting my work for publication. I remember sitting in his office as he talked about my story “Into the Lion’s Mouth.” He was low-key about it all, and I felt as though my entire life was changing as I sat there. Here was one of the editors of the Norton anthologies telling me he thought my writing was worth something.
I took my last class for my Masters at Michigan State University. I had come full circle. The six week course was called the Clarion Science Fiction Workshop. I picked this workshop because it was the only one that I could find where established writers actually worked with the students. I had heard about Clarion from Russell Bates when I was in Europe one summer. (I worked full-time all through college so I could pay for tuition and travel. I went to Europe three or four times while I was in college.) At Clarion I met eighteen other fledgling writers, along with the teachers who were writers making their living as writers. It was the first and perhaps only time that I felt I was amongst my peers in a community where I was completely comfortable. It changed my life. Most importantly, I met Canadian writer and college student Mario Milosevic.
Before the end of the six weeks, Mario and I were in love. At the end of the course, Mario returned to Canada, and I went back to Ypsilanti. We saw each other on the weekends; sometimes I drove to Waterloo where he was finishing school, sometimes I’d take the train, and sometimes Mario would take the train to Windsor and I’d pick him up and take him back to Ypsilanti.
We got married in the summer of 1981 outside in the Arboretum in Ann Arbor with many of our friends from Clarion. A year after that, we moved to the coast of Oregon. A few years later, we moved to Arizona for a year while I got my library degree. We returned to the Pacific Northwest where we’ve now lived for nearly twenty-five years. We wander the woods together, work, write our stories, and attempt to live in this world as peacefully and sustainably as possible! We also go back to the Southwest at least once a year to get our fix of coyotes, bobcats, and saguaros. 
I sold my first story to a literary magazine in 1981. The magazine went under before the story was published. Soon after that, I sold a story to Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. That one got published. I sold my first novel, The Jigsaw Woman, in 1995. I’ve had four novels published since then. My sixth novel, Ruby’s Imagine, will be published this summer.
I’m not sure why I write. It’s something I’ve always done. I think in stories. I am constantly trying to figure out the world and my place in it; I suppose writing stories is how I decipher the world for myself. Mostly I feel as though these people—my characters—come to me and start telling me their stories; I write them down and hope I do their stories justice.
P.S. Still want more? You can go here to check out my interview with 60 plus people!
My Writing Biography
