At 16 or so, I discovered that I wasn't. Not a Prima Ballerina anyhow, and darned if I was going to settle for the corps de ballet.
Disgruntled, I further realized that alone among my peers I hadn't the least interest in marriage and families. Nor in office work, the
only thing going for women in the '30's.

Joined the Navy in 1944 and after that mess was over, I decided to go to college, and applied to Reed without knowing enough not
to. They took me, it turned out, on "possible potential," and I waltzed innocently in...and by the time I realized that I would have to
excitement. (An astrologer once told me I had "a jack-ass determination that never knew when it was beaten, and consequently
seldom was." True, I guess. A useful, albeit sometimes uncomfortable, quality.) At any rate, it was there I learned the discipline to
write, but still had no idea of doing it. That childhood conviction was still with me.

But what to do? I still wanted neither marriage nor the office work I was temporarily stuck with. Moved to San Francisco, and then
L.A., where (on Hollywood and Vine, true to cliche) I ran into an old high school friend who had just had a children's story published
in a real magazine! Mental barriers collapsed all around me with almost audible crashes. I rushed home and started Highland Rebel
that night.

I must have had a lot of writing dammed up in me. The first draft wrote itself in three weeks, the final in another three. It was
accepted by the first place I submitted it, Henry Holt, without revision! And I was such a novice I didn't even know this was
remarkable luck. (Needless to say, it never happened again.)

After three books, I had enough money to go to Europe for five months. Three more books, and I went back to England for a year
and studied Highland dancing and wrote some more books. Passport and money ran out, so back to California for five years, helping
Mother put out the first-ever audio-visual phonics course (which I now see duplicated virtually everywhere I turn. Never mind,
Mother had good material, and the more who use it, the better.) Once it was accepted for publication, I realized I could now live in
England on royalties, whereas I couldn't begin to in the U.S. So I went there and did that, and joined in Mensa, and went on writing
books, and took up Judo at age 45, and I reckon I'm the only woman ever to do that and make Black Belt. Third Dan, at that.

Then, in about 1972, the bottom fell out. Up until then, my books were selling slowly but steadily, mostly to schools and libraries;
and every time stocks got low, they just printed up a new edition. Now tax laws, it seems, were changed so that it was now
uneconomical for publishers to keep books in stock over the turn of the year. So all twelve of my books went out of print almost
simultaneously. And I was engrossed in Judo and also in copper enameling, and gardening my English country garden, and raising cats.
So I stopped writing. And old fans kept writing and asking for copies of my books, and there weren't any.

After 24 years in England, I came back to America, the Sonoma County (not Napa) wine country, and joined a
cat-rescue-and-adoption group and helped form another; and old fans kept on pleading for copies, and I discovered that feisty
heroines are more needed now than in the '50s and '60s...so...