Thank you so much for your letter. I wish I could answer each letter I receive personally, but if I did I might have to give up writing books. So I have prepared this letter which answers many of the most commonly asked questions.
Many people want to know how I happened to become a writer of books for young people. Actually, I decided on a career as a writer when I was eight years old. A decision that grew, I'm sure, out of my childhood in the country in California. No TV, few movies, and no travel might have meant a boring existence if it hadn't been for animals and, most of all, books. Our many animals were all my close friends, and a nearby library was a constant source of magic, adventure and excitement. And when I wasn't reading or playing with animals I made up games and stories.
I had games for every part of my daily life. Most of my games were secrets. At the time I thought nobody knew about them although, as I look back, I'm sure people wondered about the weird things I sometimes did. Things such as cracking an imaginary bull whip as I walked to school. (A journey that involved driving a team of oxen across a terrible desert on my way to the California gold rush.)
And then there were the stories. I made up stories about everything and anything. Some of my stories were mostly written versions of a particular game or of the daydreams that came to me while waiting to go to sleep at night. Others were written down and turned in as class assignments, while still others were simply told to friends and family. It was usually the ones I told that got me into trouble. "You're a story teller," friends sometimes told me in a not altogether complimentary way. Or my mother would sigh and say, "Just tell it. Don't embroider it." Making stuff up, I soon decided, could get you in trouble.
And then one day I realized that instead of being scolded for making stuff up, some lucky people actually made a living at it. And those people were fiction writers. That, I decided immediately, was for me. I was going to be a fiction writer. From that time on I considered myself a writer, even though it was a long time before many people agreed with me. During that long time I grew up, got married, had children of my own, and taught school for a few years, while all the time promising myself that I would start writing again as soon as things quieted down. And when things did quiet down, the year my youngest child started kindergarten, my years in the class room inspired me to write a story for young people.
My first book was published in 1964 and was called SEASON OF PONIES, and now I have over 30. You will find a list of all my books for young people elsewhere in this web page. Most of them are for people in the fourth through eighth grades, although I have heard from third graders as well as from high school students who are reading my books.
Some of my stories are fantasies, some are borderline (stories that have a touch of magic), and some are quite realistic. But even in the most realistic there is usually a bit of the strange and mysterious.
Some people want to know if the characters in my book are "real" people and if the stories themselves are "true". The answer is that many of the characters in my stories were inspired by people I have known or at least met briefly, but none of them are exactly the same as the real person. And the stories themselves often have bits and pieces of true events; events I have read or heard about or experienced myself. And there are, I hope, other kinds of truths in the stories--true facts, feelings and ideas. But in all of my stories the "real" bits are strung together, enlivened and decorated, with large amounts of sheer imagination. That's what fiction writing is all about.
I now live in Mill Valley, a small town not far from San Francisco. My husband, Larry, has recently retired from the music department of Sonoma State University. Our three children, Melissa, Ben and Douglas, are grown and away from home.
When we lived in the country we had all kinds of animals, including horses, but now that we live in town we have only one small bundle of energy, a Silky Terrier named Joey.
My hobbies are still reading and travel and, of course, writing, which besides being my occupation has always been my all-time favorite hobby.
I hope this answers at least some of your questions.