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Biography
My life as a writer began at age nine when my sister, my cousins, and I wrote a play we called The Rich Killers. I also became an actor, because we performed our play for my parents, aunts, and uncles. It was a big hit. Really.
As a kid, I also liked talking and was pretty good at it. As an adult, I decided to put this skill to use by becoming an interpretive ranger in the National Park Service.* This way, not only do I get to spend my days talking to interesting people from all over the world; I've worked at wonderful places like Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, and Mammoth Cave; wear a cool hat and a badge, and get paid to do it.
My job as a speaker led me back to writing. (My job as a nine-year-old playwright didn't work out.) At Mammoth Cave National Park, my fellow interpreters and cave explorers told me stories about being in the cave and hearing voices when no one was there, seeing floating bottles, being cursed by an ancient mummy, and other spooky tales. But they were all oral; somebody needed to write this stuff down! My friend and fellow interpreter Charlie Hanion and I decided this was the job for us. For details on our quest to figuratively dig up as many ghosts as we could, see Scary Stories of Mammoth Cave under Books.
Several years, a few books and articles later, I still spend my days roaming Mammoth Cave's dark passages and my evenings writing about sundry things. I live with my cave explorer/ecologist husband Rick and my border collie Kitty Pup (yes, that's really her name).
*What do National Park Interpreters Interpret? We don't interpret Chinese, Swedish, or Finnish (at least most of us don't). We interpret the language of caves, glaciers, battlefields, and other park resources into everyday language park visitors can understand.