I've always loved stories. I was lucky enough to have parents who read to me, a father who made up stories when we were on long drives in the car, and a mother who thought it was just fine for a child to believe in fairies. She'd never seen them herself, but then, there were a lot of things she hadn't seen that were still real. Having a younger brother meant that I got double helpings of all that. With such a childhood, I was doomed to become a writer. There have been some detours along that road, but here I am. I've had several short stories published, one poem, a number of nonfiction articles, and now Talisman. It began life as a short story. After it was published I knew that I had more to tell of that world, so I tried another couple of short stories set there. The editor who'd published the first one sent them back. They were good, he said, but they weren't short stories. They were chapters in a novel.

I'm also a reference librarian, a good job for the insatiably curious. I live in Denver in an 1895 house with my husband and a loud little calico cat, Miss Motley. I love to garden, read, and travel. It's always fascinating (and sometimes infuriating) to discover how differently other cultures approach daily life. Journeys to The Middle East, Morocco and India have definitely influenced Talisman.