My family likes to say I’ve been dragged around the world kicking and screaming, and that’s pretty much the truth.  It isn’t that I don’t love visiting places.  I do. Lived in Scotland for a couple of years and had a few brushes with ghosts, went through much of Europe and admired the museums and beautiful cities, visited the sites of my favorite myths in Greece and Italy, spent two weeks on the beach in Spain.  Oh right, that’s called a fortnight in Scotland and many Scots consider it a requirement.  Umm, Scotland is a little short on sunshine and very long on humor.

       It’s the traveling part itself, hours in a car or plane or boat, that I don’t like.  If inventors want my total devotion, they can quit redesigning kitchens and put their minds to perfecting one of those “Beam me up, Scotty,” gadgets.

     So now I pretty much stay home (except when a relative drags me somewhere) and live a year-round vacation in the Pacific Northwest.  It’s not for everybody.  Rains a lot.  But rain is good for a writer.  It keeps me inside and at my computer.  And outside my windows is a knockout view across Puget Sound where I can watch the storms blow in and out and see both sunrise and sunset from my balcony (when it’s not raining).

     Maybe the reason I started out this chat with my memories of Scotland is that my interest in astrology began there.  I was living in a small town with a one-room library and no bookstore and I am a fast reader.  Read my way around the room.  Mentioned this in a letter to a friend.  She sent me an astrology book to keep me out of mischief (probably hoping it would improve my math skills to do the equations).  I was hooked.

     After returning to the Northwest, I wrote for a Canadian astrology magazine for several years.  That led to the Mudflat series, which features an astrologer living in a magical neighborhood in Seattle today.  And that sentence is my lead-in to my books.  Come on along and let me explain...