I was born in Buffalo, New York, on a chilly morning in October, as my Dad put it. The leaves had  turned, he told me, and the world was beautiful. My first memories are of my grandfather's dairy farm, on Lake Erie.  My childhood was peopled with the fairies that lived in my grandmother's flower garden, the magical elves and wood nymphs that lived in the woods near the lake, and, of course, the mermaids who lived in the lake itself...not to mention the lake monster herself!  Oh, yes...as a child, I believed in all of these things, and more! Always an avid reader, I had cleaned out the children's library and moved up to the 'young adult" section by the time I was in second grade.  I didn't really have a favorite genre. I read everything that came into my hands, from sci fi to whodunits. Some of my favorite writers from that period in my life would be Rudyard Kipling, Agatha Christie, C.S. Lewis, and Bram Stoker....a pretty varied crew!! By fifth grade, I had discovered Shakespeare...and I enjoyed such tales as 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and 'The Merchant of Venice' among others, while continuing to read everything I could get my hands on.  Needless to say, the "American Literature" textbook that was passed out at the beginning of that year went everywhere with me, and by the time the year was over, it had definitely seen more than it's share of use! And then my Grandma gave me the most wonderful Christmas gift...my very own "big girl" Bible, bound in white leather with a tiny cross as a zipper pull, and gold-edged pages.  Oh, how I loved that Bible!  I started reading it that very Christmas morning, and by the time the Easter Bunny made his rounds, I had devoured it!  Okay, so I skipped through Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy...they bogged down with all those laws and stuff...and interrupted the story! But when I got to the gospels, oh, my!!! I had found my Hero!!!! Oh, how I loved Him!!! Oh, how He thrilled me!!! Oh, how I followed His every move, His every word!!! Oh, how I wept, when He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, when He was beaten and tortured, when the cruel Crown of Thorns was forced down unto His head...when He hung, dying, on a cruel Roman cross!!! But then...oh!!! How I shrieked with joy when He walked out of His tomb...alive!!! Yes, I am a Christian. In the sixties, we were called "Jesus Freaks"...and I am still a "Jesus Freak" today.  Inspired by writers like C.S. Lewis and Lloyd C. Douglas, it is my dream to be able to bring the characters of those beautiful Bible stories that I loved so much as a child to life, so that other people might experience them as real people, instead of "long ago, far away" characters...interesting, maybe, but with no real bearing on their busy day-to-day lives.