I’ve lived in three regions of the US. As a lover of clouds, rain, and gloom, I’m happy that I ended up in the Pacific Northwest.
My early life was spent in the Midwest. I grew up in Fort Wayne and earned a B.A. in English from Indiana University. I moved East to get my M.A. at the University of Pennsylvania, where I created and taught the first undergraduate classes in fantasy and science fiction. A couple of years later I began my career as a full-time freelance writer.
As of 2025 I’ve published more than 200 nonfiction books for teens and young readers. Nonfiction For Young Readers on this website has more information. I’ve published a few romance novels and, more recently, a couple of horror stories. The Fiction page has details.
As a reader, I lean toward horror and fantasy in fiction. Nonfiction reading includes a lot of natural history and travel narratives.
Favorite places visited so far include Tibet, Iceland, Laos, Corsica, Bulgaria, Istanbul, Uruguay, Patagonia, Costa Rica. I also love road-tripping around my home state. Oregon has it all: glorious Pacific coast, forested mountain chain, and high-desert interior.
One room in my house has an ancient oilcloth map of Tibet on one wall and a view into the branches of a monster cottonwood tree. That room is my office, where I spend a good part of every day. Often I am accompanied—or distracted—by the Speckled Menace, aka the Bengal cat Xanthe.