I was raised in North Bend, Oregon, a peaceful town close to the sea. As the oldest of five children, I often entertained my siblings with fabricated stories about witches and magical creatures. My parents passed on to us their love of the written word and we became avid readers. Dad, a radiologist who had several medical books and a few short stories published, told us we could do anything if we really believed in ourselves.
In the middle of my high school freshman year our family moved to Klamath Falls in southern Oregon, with a lake for water-skiing and exciting new educational and social challenges. Reading and writing were my favorite school subjects. Through them I began a life-long quest for travel and new adventures.
During my second year at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, I traveled to Mexico with twenty-two students and two professors to study for six months with the Experiment in International Living. For two months we lived with families in Merida, Yucatan, before moving to Mexico City to study with local University professors. While living in a pension in Mexico City, I met a young architect who would eventually become my husband. But first I had to convince my parents to let me return to Mexico to study for a year at the University of the Americas. I finished my final year at Lewis and Clark College with a B.A. in Spanish.
Now I could follow my travel dreams! For two years I flew as a flight attendant for Pan American Airlines, flying to every continent except Africa. In those days we had 3-4 day layovers in amazing places like Argentina, Aruba, Tahiti, and Thailand; my hungry mind was already storing information for book material.
I married Eduardo Gual in 1969 and lived happily in Mexico City for eighteen years. We raised our two daughters to be bi-lingual and bi-cultural. In my free time, I entertained myself by working as an actress in Mexican television programs, American movies filmed in Mexico (Caveman, Under Fire, Volunteers, etc.) modeling, and filming commercials. I also taught Spanish to American executives and English to Mexican businessmen and children.
In 1986, after my divorce, I brought my daughters to San Diego to start over. I became a U.S. Customs Inspector and was sent to Brunswick, GA to the Federal Law Enforcement Academy for training. As fate would have it, I met my future husband Michael in my basic training class! After a seven-year relationship, (three of them long distance), we married and have just celebrated our thirteenth anniversary!
While working as a Customs Inspector, I wrote my first book "The Bumpedy Road" as a tribute to my daughters to thank them for their courage in following and supporting me and the life changes my divorce had inflicted on them. I decided to write it with our Mexican cat Kiska as narrator. We thought it would be a "stand-alone" book, but school children wrote to me, again and again, asking for a sequel. "Rain City Cats" was written next, also during my six-year tour of duty in Vancouver, B.C. Canada, and "Eight Paws to Georgia" was completed after our move to St. Simons Island, GA. Now we had a "Kiska Trilogy" -- I was really an author! I had worked for twelve years as a Customs Inspector and now my husband encouraged me leave the government and work full-time as an author.
About this time, my younger daughter was raising a guide puppy for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Soon we met Aloha and learned all about the "Puppy-Raising Program." When the time came for her to return Aloha to the school for formal training, she phoned us in tears. I asked her what I could do to make it easier and she answered: "Write a book about Aloha's story." "Hello, Goodbye, I Love You is that story."
Since moving to coastal Georgia, I've been intrigued with local history. Neptune Small lived as a slave on one of the fourteen island plantations during the antebellum period, and he performed an incredibly loving and heroic deed for his master's son. This local legend had never been written in book form, so I sought out Neptune's descendants and asked their permission to write it. "Neptune's Honor" has been well received and has given them their great-grandfather's legacy in written form.
My second historical fiction was released in early 2007. Entitled "An Angry Drum Echoed: Mary Musgrove, Queen of the Creeks," it tells the story of a Creek woman who met General Oglethorpe's ship when he landed to colonize Georgia. She became his interpreter and emissary and smoothed the path to cooperation between the Creeks and the colonists.
This keen interest in southern historical characters takes me back to my youth, when reading biographies and historical fiction captured my imagination and took me to other places. My books are written for children and young adults, to educate yet entertain. Michael and I enjoy traveling and sharing our favorite books. Sometimes we'll even read them to Jasper and Sukey Spice, our cats! We are members of Lions Club International, and I was the local chapter's president in 2006-2007. Our grandbabies bring us great joy and we visit them in Australia and San Diego whenever we can.
