It’s all my dad’s fault.

When I visited my childhood home during Spring Break of 2016, my dad told me and my sister he had a story he wanted one of us to write (Rescued). I listened intently, never intending to write the story. But a short time later, I got an idea for another story I wanted to write (Refuge). I decided I couldn’t write my story without first writing my dad’s story. So, after being a stay-at-home mom for almost 20 years—the day my youngest of seven children started Kindergarten—I started writing.

Okay, so maybe it’s partly my mom’s fault.

Though she never got published, my mom wrote all kinds of stories (mostly romance, though. Hmm…wonder where I got it from.). She got so tired of me complaining about being bored during those long summer days on the farm in Southern Utah, that she handed me the pages of the story she was writing and said, “Read this!” Summer after summer, I waited anxiously for the next page to be written, so I could read it.

I’ve since traded the farm for a little slice of country living in Northern Utah, where I still love getting lost in the pages of a book almost as much as I love my crazy, rowdy family.