Army brat from the start
On the day I came into the world, my mom thought she had a bad case
of indigestion from lasagna consumed the night before.

No, it was just me.

My grandfather had flown to California for my impending birth.  He and
my dad were disappointed that they had to cancel a planned fishing trip
to drive my mom to the hospital.   My dad had a two-seater sports
car.  He was the only person who knew how to drive a stick shift; my
grandfather was too, shall we say, hefty to fit in the back, so my nine-
months pregnant mom squeezed in behind them.

The hospital was still being built, so a converted mess hall (that’s what
the army very appropriately calls a cafeteria) served as the temporary
labor and delivery suite.  My mom was given sheets and told to make
her own bed.

The army required my parents to submit baby names several months
before I was born.  If I were a boy, I would have been John Joseph.  
My mom wanted to name me Gina.  (Too Italian, my dad said.)  So
they settled on Jeanne Marie.
My father was drafted into the army during the Vietnam
War.  He never went to Vietnam.  Instead, the army trained
him as a Korean linguist, and he spent six years of my
childhood in South Korea.  Because he was stationed on the
DMZ (Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea)
and this area was considered too dangerous for families, my
mom and I stayed behind in the U.S.

Considering all this, it’s probably no surprise that I’m an only
child.  As a kid moving from place to place, I wished
desperately for brothers or sisters.  I figured I must be a lot
of work (and I probably was) for my parents not to want any
more kids.  But once I got to high school, I came to
appreciate that there were definitely pluses to being an only
child.
My Italian grandmother moved in with us when I was six.  We shared a
room until I was twelve.  She snored loudly and refused to let us sleep with
the windows open– even when it was a hundred degrees out (and we didn’t
have air conditioning!).  She was the closest thing I had to a sibling.  We
fought a lot, and loved each other a lot.

We also had golden retrievers (Misty, Amber, Casey, Riley, and Connor.)  
My grandmother used to tell me that the dog know how to cook better than
I did because at least she watched.   She was probably right.

By the beginning of third grade, I had attended six elementary schools.  I
was in eighth grade before I ever lived off of an army base.  Talk about
culture shock!

Third grade was also the year I realized I wanted to be a writer.  
Specifically, I wanted to write for kids.  While many grown-ups tried to
convince me that this was not a wise career path and that I would never pay
my bills (and they were probably right), I always kept this goal in sight.  
More important, I always wrote.
Writer (almost) from the start
After college, I moved to Los Angeles (Burbank, to be specific) to begin an unpaid
internship on my favorite TV soap opera, DAYS OF OUR LIVES.  My grandmother
had started me on my lifelong soap addiction – who knew it would be a career path?  
She watched ALL MY CHILDREN but would switch to DAYS at the end just to see
my name in the credits.

Eventually, I got hired and paid a little more than nothing to be a writers’ assistant.  It
might sound like a glamorous job.  It was not.

A writers’ assistant:

Makes (a lot of) coffee
Fetches lunches for picky writers
Makes thousands of copies
Gets very friendly with the copier repair person

Yes, I did “meet” the actors.  No, they did not really talk to me.  And I was so shy
that if they had, I wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.
Laura Ingalls Wilder for Halloween...
4 years in a row
(Can you tell it was the '70s?)
Bananas fresh from the backyard are the best
The things you learn in Hawaii
I feel very lucky to have the job I’ve dreamed about most of my life.  
And someday I’ll be able to tell my kids, “Your mommy wrote that
book.”
Guess who?
Eventually, I got promoted and hired as a scriptwriter.  I finally got paid enough
money and had enough time that I was able to be truly serious about writing books.  
I enrolled in the MFA in Writing for Children Program at Vermont College and
graduated in 2001.  I worked with some of the very best writers in the field –
professors, guest lecturers, and fellow students.  It was awesome.  I still “talk” via e-
mail to my classmates just about every day.
My dad went to Korea,
and all he brought me was this cool Halloween costume