I wish I could say something fascinating about myself, like I was born in Borneo and raised by super-intelligent giant squirrels, but alas, that's not true. Of course, the fact that something isn't true hasn't stopped any fiction writer yet, so if you want to believe I was worshipped as a goddess by a band of cannibals until I was rescued by time-traveling vikings, that's okay by me. Unfortunately, the uninteresting truth is that I was born in the little town of Alhambra, on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and lived in and around the L.A. Basin until 1994. That's when my husband and I packed up our lares, penates, computers and both cats and moved to a game refuge in Northern California, about 150 miles north of San Francisco. We now have six cats instead of two, but aside from that nothing much has changed.
In between writing books, I putter in the garden and dole out snacks to the cats, birds, raccoons, and a couple of entirely too friendly skunks. I also do a little painting in oils, but lately I've been working on computer art instead, which is cleaner and faster. No one yet has had to sit around waiting for a pixel to dry.
As far as my history as a writer goes, I sold my first story, "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry" to editor John Campbell, for Astounding, and followed that with other short story sales to magazines and anthologies. My first novel was a black comedy called "The Cosmic Wheel" and since then I've written seventeen more novels and additional short stories. One of the nice things about writing it that it doesn't take up much space and also gives the writer wonderful opportunities for staring glassy-eyed into space while claiming to be "working." Writers also get to buy incredible numbers of books and claim that they're absolutely essential for for research. Of course, having the Internet and Google at hand does sort of cut into that excuse a mite, but a creative intellect can always find some reason for buying new, used, or electronic books.
I'm especially partial to electronic books because for the past five years most of my writing has been published in electronic form. I admit that I still like the feel of a paper book in my hand, but there are definite advantages to the electronic format. For one, people can build personal libraries without being run out of the house by their book collections. Dubious books in the traditional plain paper wrappers are a thing of the past, and just think of the forests that will be saved when the lastest celebrity's tell-all confession comes out as an ebook!
One of the standard arguments against ebooks was that they'd never catch on because "you can't take a computer to bed without you!" With the new Sony and Kindle readers, you can do just that. Just think, kids no longer have to use up flashlight batteries reading under their covers after they're supposed to be asleep. Save a tree; support ebooks!