Biography

I can’t remember a time I didn’t want to write ... and that’s a big, fat lie.

Truth? Writing can be a chore. It’s hard work to hold all those thoughts that flash through your brain in quick seconds and in perfect form long enough to recreate them on paper for social studies and English teachers and for business reports and strategic plans. And creative writing? It’s easier to bite your ears off.

So why did I start writing? Why do I write now? I keep getting ideas that threaten to explode from my still-attached ears unless I put those thoughts onto paper.

My official writing career got jumpstarted one night in college when I realized I’d go nuts if I continued to follow my chosen major (not good when that major is psychology). “Now what?”
It took 14 whole minutes to realize I was at the University of Missouri which houses one of the finest journalism schools in the world. I switched to advertising.

During my advertising career, I’ve written way too much about shoes, but I’ve also written about movies, fluid fertilizer, books, sewing machines, beer, leather cleaner, street banners, rodeos ... even words for a giant fortune cookie.

I’ve worked in a department store, a factory, a pre-school and spent one day training to sell products door to door but again decided I’d rather bite my ears off. That time I truly meant it.

Looking back, I might have liked to become a treasure hunter, a codebreaker, a movie director, an artist and an inventor. But the most exciting part about writing is, I can explore all those occupations and adventures with the characters in my books.

FUN FACTS:

I live about 15 to 20 minutes from the Gateway Arch, but only about 3 minutes from a place where I can see it.

Once you start growing garlic, it just sort of replants itself every year.

My pets currently include ... well ... do dust bunnies count?
But did you know that not only was it legal for aunts and grandmas to travel to Miami and buy baby alligators, it wasn’t unusual for them to ship baby alligators to family back home as gifts? And did you know that a few weeks after shipment, baby alligators are capable of biting clean through a very thick, very leathered work glove when they’re being fed hamburger?

Zoos at that time wouldn’t necessarily accept donations of baby alligators. But five years later, one zoo was thrilled to come pick up a four-foot king snake that had found a cozy home behind a washing machine.

If it takes Author J 28 minutes to walk two miles every weekday morning, how many miles per hour is she traveling?
Even if the temperature reads 110 degrees in the portion of the Grand Canyon where the Hualapai Nation leads whitewater rafting trips along the Colorado River, the water that hits you will be around 55 degrees in the summer ... but you warm up and dry off very fast.

If my favorite football team beat the opponent by a score of 41-6, what is the most amount of times each team could have scored? What is the least? Don’t know football? Then all you need to know is that a score can consist of either 2, 3, 6, 7 or 8 points. (By the way, in that game, my team scored seven times; the opponent, two. Yay!)

If you count up all the burners, ovens and cooking appliances I own, I could be cooking in 14 different places at once. I believe I’ve made it up to eight.

If you would arrange the first initial of each state I haven’t yet set foot in, you could spell:

Marvin M. won swans.