I was born in Colorado, on the edges of the Great Plains of America, and spent my early years as a trash can for stories.  Everything went in: Greek myths, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, the romance books I snuck in while babysitting, my mother’s psychology text books, horror novels, and a whole lot of Catholic catechism.  The good kind.  And yes, there is such a thing.

When anyone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was the same: a writer.  On the first day of kindergarten, when I figured out they weren’t going to teach me to read that first hour, I packed up my stuff and walked home.  Cut school on the first day of kindergarten.  That’s how I roll.

Still a complete sucker for fiction, I graduated with degrees in English Literature and World History from Santa Clara University and taught middle school and high school until I burned off all the negative karma from all of my past lives.  While not enlightened, I will be going straight to heaven because of my time in the trenches, molding young minds and avoiding bullets.

I hooked up with a world traveler, got married, traveled the world (since I studied it and what’s history but a bunch of interesting stories?), and returned to the Great Plains to raise two sleepless little girls who never ate a thing.  I think they might be Cylons.

Since I didn’t sleep, I ran triathlons.  It takes endurance to raise children and write novels, so I had lots and lots of practice.

In stolen moments along the way I wrote books, big books, huge sweeping, windy books, too big and bizarre for anyone to read.  Mostly post modern fantasy novels: think David Lynch meets The Lord of the Rings with a Sci-Fi-Hindu-Christian-atheist twist.  A million monkeys on meth couldn’t churn it out as fast as I could.  Lord in heaven, I loved those books.

My writing life changed forever when a genuine literary agent rejected me, reducing me to ashes.  After numerous, fist-shaking rants at heaven, hours spent weeping in critique groups, and membership in Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, I rose from the ashes, very phoenixy, and started writing books people could read and even like.  In my better moments, I think I write genre fiction with a literary twist.  In my darker moments, well, I’ll keep those demons to myself.

Currently, when I’m not scribbling and smoking cigars, I work at the best health care company on the planet helping OR nurses with their computers.  And I’m a recovering TV addict.  My last relapse was with Battlestar Galactica (the new, bleak one) and Firefly (you can’t stop the signal).  I attend support groups.  It helps.