I was born in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania during a time when coal mining was the major industry and it was slowly playing out. By the time I was old enough to start looking for a job, the want-ads in the local newspaper was about six inches long. Filled with babysitting and house cleaning jobs. I used to think this was the reason I fought my parents so hard to leave.

It was a time when daughters just didn't up and go, so I got an aunt in New Jersey to take me in and I started looking for a job in New York City. I knew a school chum who had gotten a job with the airlines in their reservations department and it sure sounded good to me. So I applied with Eastern Airlines and away I went. Reservations departments at the time were huge open bay things with shifts coming and going every hour on the hour from 7AM until midnight. The midnight to seven shift were a specially trained group and it was considered a promotion to get on.

I spent a year in res, transferred to speed-mail-ticketing (for people who wanted their tickets mailed to them-every ticket hand written) and then moved over to domestic rate desk. That consisted of creating fares for people who booked more that a round trip in the USA or Canada. There was an international rate desk, but I didn't go there. Instead I quit Eastern and moved over to BOAC. That was before BOAC and BEA merged and became British Airways. I worked refunds department and then moved to rate desk. BOAC only did international fares and since I'd come from a domestic airline and had domestic rate desk experience, I got to keep the Squires domestic tariff. I gigantic book that revised by page with advanced dates of usage on them. The closest thing I've ever come close to seeing to match one of these monsters was in an auto parts store. The international airlines revised by book parts, much easier. On the other hand several airlines published their own tariffs and it was necessary to use them all. Pan Am, BOAC, Swissair and SAS were mandatory. Pricing international fares were complicated things done by adding up the miles between destination cites. Every two pairs of international cities had a miles allotment to determine how many stopovers in between you could get without having to pay more. If the routing exceeded that amount then there were overage tables to determine how much more had to be paid. 5 to 25 percent was allowed, if it was over 25 percent, then it really got complicated. No wonder the airlines lost money and most international airlines had to be subsidized by their governments. The tariff books were huge, and filled with pricing, mileage allotments, city-coded maps, percentage tables, fare rules, tariff rules and more.

At that time there was lots of free travel, but that's a whole different story. And, oh yes, I managed to get married somewhere in there. When I got pregnant, we moved to Oregon. What a change! Lived here ever since with one fifteen-month try to move back to the big city.

In Oregon I worked at a travel agent, moving with the never-ending-changes in the industry, and ended up being forced into retirement when my large worldwide agency closed their doors in Oregon. That was December 2001.

I've been writing since the early eighties, trying my hand at a romance novel and then moving on the SF short stories, and now mystery novels. I'm sticking with novels. I try a short story every so one in a while, but I can't write one without adding some kind of spooky, twisty, or aliens-among-us ending.

I have a rather odd perspective on life, I hope my protagonist will too, but you never know how agents and editors will take that. I'm open. I have one daughter and two grandchildren, and though I'm still married-thirty nine years this year-we don't live together. We both like it that way.