A little about me…

A Whole Lot More About Me...
I was born in Indiana but grew up in El Cajon, California. I always loved school and can still remember the excitement of learning to read in first grade. Suddenly I could decipher the words in books, and billboards, and cereal boxes, and everything everywhere!

We lived in a trailer court the first several years and there were always lots of kids to play with. When I was in fourth grade we moved into a simple three-bedroom house, which seemed unbelievably spacious to me. There weren't as many kids around, but the house  was only three blocks from the public library, and what could be better than that?

In the sixth grade, we had a weekly assignment to write a sentence for each of the week's new vocabulary words. I found it more fun to weave all the words into a brief, if sometimes silly, story. I always raised my hand and got to read my story aloud. After a while, others in the class began writing stories also. That started a small rivalry to see who could write the most fun story with the eclectic selection of words. The whole class seemed to enjoy the readings.

When I was a sophomore in high school my history teacher gave me a "D" on my first book report. She also penned a strong warning about copying from book reviews. My first reaction was to be flattered. When it sunk in that I was being accused of plagiarism, I went to my homeroom teacher (who also happened to be my English teacher). She told the history teacher that I really was capable of writing at that level and my grade got adjusted accordingly.

When I was a freshman in college, I walked into my English classroom on the first day of school to find two large blackboards filled with things not to do when writing (never start a sentence with "and" or "but"; don't use "it" unless its referent is fewer than six words away," etc.). I was petrified and completely unable to turn in my first written assignment. The teacher asked why I hadn't turned in a paper. I told her that everything I tried to write contained at least one of those "don'ts"! She told me to forget about those for the moment and just turn in a paper. When I did, she called me after class and quizzed me about some of the things I had written, essentially implying that I had copied at least part of it from somewhere. I succeeded in convincing her that it was all my own writing, and subsequent assignments erased remaining doubts. 

I learned a lot about writing from that teacher, but surely there are less traumatizing ways to accomplish that goal.

That same year, same teacher, we read Ethan Frome. I was impressed by Edith Wharton's way of unveiling her story, dark and depressing though it is. One of the things that struck me most was her use of color. The story was filled with blacks and browns and grays. I'm a very visual person and needed to see for myself exactly what part color played in Wharton's writing. So I got hold of a roll of paper and a set of colored pencils and went through Ethan Frome word-for-word, coloring a swatch with the appropriate pencil and noting the context every time I came across a color word. It was a laborious but fascinating experiment and I ended up with immense respect for Wharton's mastery.

I eventually showed the finished product to my English teacher. She was impressed. In fact, she was going to England the next year on sabbatical and asked if she could take the roll along. I'm not sure what she did, or was intending to do, with it, but again, I was flattered.

Amid moves, marriage, the birth of our daughter, meager finances, and other life eventualities, it took me ten years, three colleges, and one community college to get my Batchelor's degree. At the same time my husband was working toward his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry. We both graduated--he with his Ph.D. a few weeks before our son was born. 

I loved the school part, but hated having to curtail my studying to attend to family needs. And I really hated having to curtail family needs to take time out for studying. I definitely wanted to continue and earn a master's degree in English, but I wasn't willing to share either family or studies so I waited until the kids were older. I wanted to enjoy my school experience without feeling guilty.

My life quickly filled with kid activities, including being Girl Scout Leader for my daughter's troop, as my mother had been leader for mine. I also became an animal rehabilitation volunteer at the Kalamazoo Nature Center. Our summers were consumed with the joys of caring for orphaned baby raccoons and squirrels and opossums and birds, and releasing them back into the wild. It was only natural then that when I began to write, I wrote my first book about orphaned raccoons.

But before that, I found my way back to school -- Western Michigan University (WMU) -- and discovered Chaucer and Dante and Shakespeare. I became enthralled with all things medieval and got my master's degree in English with an emphasis on Medieval Literature. I even decided to continue another year to broaden my knowledge of the history and art and culture of the period and earned a MA, that one in Medieval Studies. Along the way I got the priceless opportunity to study and handle rare medieval manuscripts at the Newberry Library in Chicago and of cataloguing manuscripts and early printed books in WMU's own Cistercian Library.

I also taught Freshman Composition at WMU and eventually made my way to the University of Notre Dame where I taught Freshman Composition and Literature and took classes in medieval literature. 

When I stopped commuting to Notre Dame, in 1992, I decided to write a book about raising raccoons. I had barely started when I was asked to teach Research and Report Writing and Children's Literature at WMU. The kid-lit classes were a learning as well as a teaching experience and I fell in love with the whole span of children's literature, from PB to YA (picture book to young adult).

Life circumstances intervened once again. Both Kristin and Keith were married and off on their own and Adrian and I moved to Missoula, Montana, and started our own printing business. Initially we were incredibly busy and there was no time even to think about writing. About the time things slowed enough for me to add a chapter or two to my raccoon book, we bought property in Seeley Lake and our time was consumed with clearing trees for a house and then helping to build the house.

Around 2002 I began writing in earnest. In 2005 I finished and revised. In 2006 I started sending manuscript copies to publishers and agents. In 2020 my manuscript was accepted by Chicken Scratch Books. 

MY book was published in April of 2021, under the name Raccoon Summer. I was 76 years old.