When my third-grade teacher allowed me access to the fiction room at the school library, I had already read Black Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, and a good bit of King Arthur and Robin Hood. In that special room, I discovered Louisa Alcott and Robert Heinlein, an odd marriage of the minds, which may be why I'm into steampunk: neo-Victorian adventure science fiction. These two authors have had the most influence on my desire to share my point of view with the world and to explore how the world might be made better. I also read Mark Twain, Isaac Asimov and Madeline L'Engle.  More recently, I read Anne McCaffrey, Ursula LeGuin, Frederick Pohl, and Spider Robinson.   My current favorite authors include Terry Pratchett, Shelly Adima, Elmore Leonard, Gail Carriger and Neil Gaiman. I have always felt a bit off plumb, and see the world from a skewed point of view. In my writing, I explore why people seek out the odd and the twisted, and I look at the absurdity of contemporary life against the depths of the human condition. Reality is for peple who have no imagination, so I write fractured fairy tales with real toads in them.  

2005 Eppie for children's books: The Thing in the Tub, an anthology of poems for children which included two of my poems.