I am the 11th child in a family of 11 children. Growing up, we read a lot of poetry to each other, and as a result, I started writing poetry at an early age. Later, I graduated to short stories, and then novels.
I live in the North West, and when I was 62 years old, I decided to build myself a cabin, on ten acres, which I did, pretty much by myself, with a little help from some of my children. I love living in the country, and have lived on an Indian Reservation. I am a cancer survivor, thanks to the support of my family. I have six children and 16 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren.
I started writing novels when I was 18 years old. My novel Winslow's Web was my first novel. However over the years, I ended up raising six children of my own, as a single mother, and while I still wrote novels, and told stories to my children, which I made up, I was too busy raising my children, to work on publishing my novels, even though I almost got Winslow's Web published back in the 70's.
We lived in an 12 by 18 foot cabin, in the country, without any running water or power, where we had horses, and other animals, for about ten years, when my children were young. Once my children got older, I went back to writing more novels. When I began studying the Plains Indians, I decided to write Gentle Savage, because I wanted others to discover the things I had been learning about the Indians, in a Novel form.
I have also written hundreds of poems, songs, and several short stories, about events in my life.
I used to read my novels to my children, and then I began reading them to my grandchildren. They all encouraged me to publish my novels, but being a new author made it difficult to break into getting published, before free self publishing came along. I kept getting rejection slips, and finally gave up.
It wasn't until my daughter Marni Macrae, who wrote Lady Sun, got her book published through kindle, and did so well with it, that I decided to publish my books there as well. I am so glad I did, because now I have the satisfaction of knowing other people are enjoying the stories that I enjoyed writing.
Even if I never was able to publish my books, I would have continued writing novels, because that is what I love doing best, even if no one ever read my work, except my family.
