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My Roots
I was born in Provo, Utah, the second child and oldest daughter of eight children. I was basically a
good kid who always had her nose in a book. I literally read everything I could get my hands on. People
in our neighborhood cringed at their doors when I came around searching for sponsors in the read-a-thons
because no one could afford for me to read so many novels.
My mother taught me to read when I was four using phonetics. My father, a French professor at Brigham
Young University repeatedly corrected my grammar. They loved books and often I would see them reading.
I spent my most informative childhood years in Highland where I attended American Heritage School from the
1st through 4th grades. Their rigorous reading program, along with my parents' diligence, gave me a deep and
lasting love of reading and literature and religion. It was with great sadness that I left that school when
the tuition increased. (Now I feel deeply indebted to my mother who worked so hard cleaning the school and
baby-sitting to make ends meets so that I could have that education.)
Later, during a six-month portion of the sixth grade at Shelley Elementary, I went to France with my family
on the BYU Study Abroad. It was there, at age eleven, that I learned about Marie Antionette and roamed the
streets of Paris with my thirteen-year-old brother, thus setting the stage for my first published novel,
Ariana: The Making of a Queen. And yes, my brother and I, sometimes taking my nine-year-old sister,
really did wander Paris and the surrounding areas. We went on the bus and the metro together. We went to
stores and bought candy and fireworks. When I verified my memories with my mother, she told me it was a
different world back then and keeping six children penned up in a two-bedroom apartment—well,
three once we blocked off the dining room—was next to impossible. I'm so grateful for all those memories!
As for writing, I came up with novel plots as early as ten and eleven (one of which I ended up writing as
an adult called The Land of Magic), but the dream wasn't concrete. The first remembrance
I have of really
knowing I would be a writer was when I was twelve and in the seventh grade. That was when I wrote my first
science fiction story, and my English teacher seemed impressed, yet I had so
many more stories I wanted to tell.
At that moment I decided to become the WORLD'S GREATEST AUTHOR. Ha! At twelve, that didn't sound so daunting
as it does to me now. That I remember my teacher's name—Mrs. West—when I don't remember any other
teachers at Dixon Junior High goes a long way toward saying what a profound experience this discovery was for me.
With my vocation in mind, I set about growing up so I could get to it. I lived a normal, happy childhood,
and basically only wrote for English classes until I was seventeen. It was then I bought a computer when
everyone else my age bought cars, and I began expanding that first science fiction story to a full-length book.
After high school, I moved to California to work and see some of the world. When I had time, I worked on my book.
It was rejected repeatedly by editors, but I didn't give up hope. At age twenty-one, I became a missionary for my
church. I went to Portugal (in Europe next to Spain) to serve,
and it was there I met TJ, a native. Four months after finishing my missionary service, we were married. We now
have six children, three boys and three girls.
I am an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I am grateful for and continually
amazed at the unparalleled sacrifice Jesus Christ made for us each of us! I have a firm testimony that our
Father-in-Heaven lives and loves us, and that He wants us to be happy. I believe He also wants us to reach
out and help and love others to our utmost ability. I hope to accomplish that in part by raising righteous
children and by writing novels that please Him.
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