I live in Duxbury, Massachusetts, a historic seaside village near Boston. It's a good place to live. People pick up litter from the side of the road—and dead Pilgrims are buried here.

I have a small but fantastic family: one husband, one son, two dogs, and one cat.

This little girl in the picture is me when I was in the first grade. I grew up in South Carolina, a beautiful state with mountains, beaches, and lots of interesting stuff in between. (I don't think any dead Pilgrims are buried there, though.)

I've always loved to write. As a child, I wrote poems and stories and even a whole book. Now that I'm grown, I still love to write. And I love children. So it seems only logical to write for children.

I enjoy writing biographies because I like reading about people's lives and I like to research. (I really do!) And I like turning facts about a life into a story about a life.

I love writing novels because I can let my imagination run wild. I especially like to write stories about the South, because that's where my heart's home is and where all my childhood memories come from. I can make my characters eat boiled peanuts and moon pies. I can set their houses down on the side of the Smoky Mountains. And I can have kudzu vines come and gobble up their barns. That's what writers do. They put little pieces of themselves into their stories—and sometimes their stories take place right in their heart's home.

Born: Greenville, South Carolina
Current Home: Duxbury, Massachusetts