Most of my life, I wanted to do something artistic. I should say, 'needed' to do something artistic because I believe that artistic people have the 'need' to create, just as a mathematician must work with figures.

The first thing I remember wanting to be was a ballerina. My mother told me it would make my calves fat, so she sent me on Baton lessons instead. For years, I could be seen in the driveway of our semi-rural home, throwing a baton in the air, dancing like a modern dancer, or hooping a hula-hoop. I had fat calves anyway.

But, for all those years, I always wrote and drew pictures. I did not think about it, it was just who I was. I was someone who needed to have a pencil and paper nearby and to draw parishioner's portraits in the margin of the church bulletin.

Those were my favorite things to do in school also, to write stories and to paint pictures. Adding up figures or studying frog parts did not fascinate me. I think for three short months I wanted to be a missionary, but that passed and I discovered photography, another art form.

With the money I made from babysitting, I purchased my first, of many, 35mm camera. You know, those old ones you put film in. They do not hook into your computer as the one I have now does. I love photography to this day and had things gone differently in my life, I might have chosen to be a photojournalist, because my interest is still people.

All of these things, writing, drawing, painting, photography, as well as my fiction, are all just ways to tell stories. When I paint a person's portrait, I see stories in their face and their posture, their clothing and their surroundings. I need to tell those stories by any media I can.

Stories are about character and that is where I start my fiction, with the character. It does not matter whether I am painting a person or writing a story. It is the person who matters.