A sixth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Waller, encouraged her students to write. In one exercise, she had her students create the ending to a story for which she provided the beginning. She chose several to read to the class. When she picked mine and began to read, I looked around clandestinely to see if others were listening. If they were not paying attention, they were doing a pretty good job of pretending.  From that day forward I decided that I was a writer. A story about my cocker spaniel went to a popular magazine, and I received my first rejection letter at age 11. I continued writing letters to my cousin in California, stories about my dog, and columns for the school page in our local weekly newspaper. I went to college, earned a degree in journalism, and worked for newspapers as a reporter and editor, pretty much so I could hang around other writers and clever people. One of these, Carolyn, suggested I write children's books, and so I did.  Major influences, besides Mrs. Waller and Carolyn, are excellent writers of fiction and nonfiction. I enjoy Alexander McCall Smith, Steven King, Charles Dickens, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, James D. Doss, Eudora Welty, and of course, E.B. White's Charlotte's Web. This of course is not a complete list of great authors--only a beginning.   I write because I can, and because I enjoy the process.   

Three books of YA fiction: Breathing Room, Crookwood and Saviors of the Bugle. The first two won the Texas Institute of Letters Award for children's fiction.