More About The Author:     I created the above picture for one of the short stories in the book ~ The Long Wave. That story is based on a dream that was so real and so detailed that I was startled awake with it filling my mind. I awoke at 4:30 in the morning and ran to my computer and started writing it all down. I worked on the details for a few more days but the main story came from the dream.     One of the new books I am working on is based on a recurring dream that I have had for years (see The End Time Deception in the Next Books page). My creative writing teacher in California, Greg Gilbert, says that many stories come to writers in dreams. If you've been having some interesting dreams you might want to start writing!     I have a personal interest in the blue horse seen on the cover of this short story book. She does not have her own story…yet…but you can learn more about her in the preview for One Blue Horse in the Next Books section. The blue horse has everything to do with me personally, with my attitude, the way I feel about life and people. It is about the things I have experienced in life, some painful, some that brought anger and some joy. It is about what I learned in all of those times and how it effected my life and outlook.     I always function better on my own or with my critters. If you put me with more than four or five people, I feel like a blue horse in a herd of zebras. You can imagine how obvious and odd looking that would be. I feel out of step, out of place and uncomfortable when faced with a crowd, which to me can be four or five people. To feel at ease with someone I need to have some common ground and share like values and goals. Well, therein lies the problem. Being that odd blue horse I do not think like the majority of people or agree with many. My husband says I am radical and I rather like that title.     I see anomalies in life, which other people don't notice. I can't explain it. I observe a lot, I do a lot of research, and things just start adding up, forming a pattern and then before long the outcome seems obvious to me. Then eventually, those same anomalies become obvious to everyone. I just figured it out ahead of time and for that, I end up feeling something like a blue horse.     My brother and I were talking just a few months ago about the way the world is heading. He suddenly said, "But you've always known that stuff, you've always seen the way it was headed and I used to laugh at you and make fun, but now I understand." I thought that was quite a compliment and good to find one person who understands me ... even if it has taken most of our lifetime.     I am for the most part a loner, happiest out in nature or at my computer writing stories. I guess it started when I was a child. I grew up in the desert of Southern California. There were few people living there, and the ones that did were scattered over a forty-mile radius in three small towns. I was terribly shy so it was hard to make friends with the few kids I met at school. To compound that my dad had a bit of wanderlust and we moved between California and Florida several times in the years I was in grade school.     I do not recall ever being lonely or feeling left out. It was just how life was. I had my dogs and cats and a big white rabbit. I was a tomboy and my dad was my best friend. The weather was temperate year round, which suited my love of the outdoors. At twelve, my dad bought me a donkey and then at fourteen my first horse. What more could a girl need. I always thought my life was ordinary.     As a teenager, I began to realize that I thought differently than most of my peers and did not have a crowd of friends like other girls. I didn't care. I read five books a week when I was in high school. Who needs friends when you have the entire world available inside each book? I think the solitary lifestyle I lived as a child gave me a very creative imagination, which helps me to see stories in ordinary things in life.     I have done many interesting things, which have inspired many of the short stories in this book. I was trained as a graphic artist at twenty-two and that was my career for many years. I have loved and ridden horses all my life. I have ridden and managed competitive trail rides with NATRAC. I worked cattle on a ranch in Montana and helped wrangle a wagon train one summer. I was camp cook, thirty horseback miles into the wilderness. I have fished on backcountry streams and rivers in Oregon and milked goats on a farm in Missouri. I've loved and I've lost and been one prayer away from death ... and all those bits of life have made great fodder for my writing cannon.     The lines you have just read give you a brief impression of this author. The short story book offered here, It Might Have Happened This Way... as the title implies, some of the stories may have happened the way they are written or they may just be pure imagination … you the reader get to guess about that! Three of the stories are excerpts from the next two books I am working on and one of those may be true.     The rest of the story about me, you will find out when the book, One Blue Horse, a journey through life, goes to print in late 2008! I share some personal experiences both good and bad and my one desire is that they will encourage readers in their own personal journey through life.     For now … I live somewhere on the coast of Australia with a completely new world to explore and write about!     I am sure that you will find a couple of the stories in this book, though sometimes odd and quirky, worthy of a read. If you are game to give it a try ... click here. BACK TO HOME PAGE