Deanna K. Klingel

I was a child in a small town in the 50's. It was a time when kids amused themselves with paper, scissors, magazines, paste, crayons, and books, while listening to the radio. That's when I wrote and illustrated my first books, lacing the pages together with shoe strings. Writing wasn't something I dreamed of doing "when I grow up;" it was something I was already doing. I wrote plays for my classmates, wrote for the school newspapers, yearbook, tons of letters of correspondence with relatives and pen pals. I recently found a yellowed poem I wrote for the Michigan State University newspaper. Don't remember it, but there it is! After I had kids (7) I wrote puppet plays and stories for them, edited school newsletters, and projects, plays and news for Scouts and church. I wrote all the time. I made scrapbooks, diaries and kept journals. I hadn't figured out that I was a writer, or an author. That didn't happen until after the children were grown and I began writing travel books for grand children. Then one day it happened. I woke up and said, "I have a story in my head, and I think it wants to be a book. I guess I'll try to write a book."