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"To my sister Mary, who has always believed that I can do anything she puts her mind to."
From the time I read The Egg and I, I have related to that dedication by its author, Betty MacDonald, because I, too, have a sister Mary. And she, too, has always believed in her sister. So when my husband called one day in 1999 and said, "I've sent you several chapters of a book I'm writing about Robert the Bruce, and I want you to tell me what you think of them," I said, "Okay." I was not living at home at the time, and he sent them to me via email. I downloaded and read his opening chapters and called him back to give my opinion. "It's good," I said. "Do you want me to edit it for you?"
"If it's so good, why does it have to be edited?" he replied. After getting his approval, I set to "editing" his work. Before long I was adding more than omitted words, and writing more than mere suggestions... I was adding new dialog and even new actions. He most graciously accepted my intrusion into his passion, and put my name on the manuscript with his. I had successfully usurped part of his opus.
We are now writing our fourth novel in the series, three of which are published, and I wrote and he illustrated a small selective "history" of our home state in the meantime.
Though we both started out and met as commercial artists, it somehow seems right that we are now authors. As a younger woman, I was told by a seer/palmist, that I would change occupations at a certain point in my life, and so I have. To visualize what life was like in another era and try to bring it to life for others is a challenge, and a joy. Now, we can't find enough time to write all the novels we have in us.
We are out on the road, traveling to venues and meeting our readers. Now, when we set up our displays and greet a reader and he or she asks, "Where's book four," we know that we're in the right vocation.
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