One didn't go over well at home as I had portrayed my father as yelling at the newspaper boy for missing the porch. (Hey, there's a reason it's called fiction!) The other was a short story where I employed the titles of television shows throughout in a very clever play on words. (Of course, I only remember 'The Mod Squad'!)

Like so many other authors, however, I was a voracious reader from day one, devouring everything from The Sword in the Stone (complete with hand puppets!) to My Friend Flicka, which I remember sitting hovered over the heater vent in the kitchen floor to read while my father made his coffee.

I moved on to my mother's Phyllis Whitney, Dorothy Eden, and Mary Stewart gothics before discovering my first true romances written by Lucy Walker and set in the Australian Outback. And then, at last, when I was 18 I found 'The Flame and the Flower'. (My son almost spent his life as Brandon because of that, but I spared him and named him Casey instead!)