After wracking my brain, I’ve come up with a few things to tell you about myself. If you decide that my bio is boring, I promise my feelings won’t be hurt. What can I say? I’ve never lived on a tropical island, or sailed around the world, or smooched the Hollywood star I have a crush on. Jake Gyllenhaal, are you listening? I was born in Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. But I tell people I’m from Kincardine, where I lived between third grade and college. If you’ve read my book, you know that Penny spends the summer in Kincardine, which is based on my Kincardine. It was such a great place to grow up, but I didn’t really get that when I was a kid. My path to becoming a writer began with my childhood hero, Judy Blume. In fourth grade, I decided I wanted to write books that were funny and truthful, just like hers. I started out by writing short stories, usually about kids solving crimes or sleeping in haunted houses, and books that never seemed to get past Chapter Four. And I read all the time, growing up—magazines, cheesy Harlequins I borrowed from my grandma, Steven King novels, the dictionary, you name it. I could also tell you about the ingenious plays my best friend Steph and I came up with for French class or the hilarious puppet shows we put on from inside the claw-foot tub at the back of our fifth-grade classroom, but I won’t. (Hey, I heard that sigh of relief!) All of those things were stepping-stones on my path to becoming an author. Yay! But wait, here comes the part where the path gets rocky. Yay! In eleventh grade, the hedonistic voices in my head told me that school was cramping my style, man, so I dropped enough classes to knock university out of my options. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, anyway. My dream of becoming a kid’s book writer wasn’t actually realistic. So, I focused on a more achievable goal—working with children in a daycare setting. Off I went to community college with my crappy marks and bad attitude. Long story short, I bombed out after one year. Next, I tried my hand at the Environmental Studies Program, figuring I’d do better at something that didn’t involve small children. And I liked it. My G.P.A. soared. But. Then I got pregnant (cue ominous music). Speaking of small children… The short and sweet version of what happened next goes something like this: I got married, dropped out of college, and had three kids while in my early twenties. Take it from me, folks: Don’t try that at home. And now, believe it or not, this all leads back to Judy Blume. In 1998, I worked nights at the Hockley Valley Ski Resort in Orangeville, Ontario. One late night, after I got in from work, I came across the new website of Judy Blume. Without giving it much thought, I sent her an email to tell her how much I’d loved her books as a kid. I also told her about my dream to be a kid’s book writer. The next day, I got a reply from her! I’ll never forget how kind and helpful she was in that email. She told me to write books. The people who write books aren’t famous, for the most part, they’re ordinary people like me. That very night, I started writing. And I haven’t stopped since. On October 16th, 2003, more than five years after I got that e-mail from Judy Blume, I got “the call.” The call I’d been waiting for since I was nine years old. My dream of being an author was actually going to come true. Want to know what happened next?