I wanted to be a ballerina, but my sense of direction caused me to go left when all the other dancers went right.  Art classes came next.  I can draw with pencils, pen and ink, and crayons.  I can use a watercolor wash to spice up my line drawings.  But, finally I landed on writing some things down in 9th grade.  I read poetry at night before bed, and I wrote verse and poems during the day.  I was in school during the race riots in 1967.  I had a short poem published in an anthology collected by George Mendoza.  I entered writing contests in Detroit newspapers and the Detroit Public Library.  I received a bit of attention from these efforts.

Then I went to college on a creative writing scholarship.  The classes were fun, and I liked writing almost as much as I liked dancing.  I had good feedback from my writing professors.  Others in those classes hated me.

I write and illustrate picture books for children.  I became a Kindergarten teacher.  Kiddie Lit. (my mother called it that) was my avenue for free expression of my muse.

I married at age 24.  My husband sat me down and told me that he was unique.  I looked at him with snake eyes.  Then, I burst into laughter and asked him how unique he was.  He was a social studies teacher at the junior high.  He was a basketball coach.

“I intend to be an athletic director.”  I laughed and laughed.  My father was in school administration and my mother and I called him an Ass Prince. “Oh,” I said, stifling my giggling.  “You are not unique. I intend to be a writer.”  I had been thinking of going to New York City to write in a small garret apartment with a cat before we married.

So, he became another Ass Prince like my dad in a small town that did not require a traffic light.  I found myself alone with a cat while he was at work.  I decided, after washing windows and screens once a week in our house, that I would write.  I thought, “Pulp fiction” would be my best bet.

I began writing science fiction.  I never read any science fiction.  I just thought, “How hard can it be?”  I let my imagination roam distant galaxies.  I imagined aliens in a strange universe, living much as humans on earth.  I wrote about space travel and developed characters with funny names.

I bought a Writer’s Market.  No computers back then…and I looked up Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.  Hopeful, I included a self addressed stamped envelope with my story.  Then I sat on the mailbox much as a bird sits on a nest. Within a week I received an envelope from Isaac Asimov’s editorial staff.  I trembled as I opened it, still walking back to my very clean house.

In it was a small slip of paper, not even a full sheet of paper.  It was my first rejection slip. I wallowed in despair.  Then, I got mad, and wrote science fiction, a story a day.  Rejection slip, after rejection slip were mailed to me.  Finally, I received a fully edited version of my last submission.  It was George Scithers!  He wrote, in red ink, “Do not give up!  You need a science lesson or so to add black holes, space travel jumps, and cryo-sleep.  The universe is immense and your stories have aliens grocery shopping.  Your stories need to show the vastness of the universes you create.”  I was excited, but depleted.  I bought an Issac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.  I read it from cover to cover and decided, in my ill willed youth, that I did not even like science fiction at that time in my life.

I do now, of course, and I respect it.  I do not attempt to write it.