1)  I’m a planner. To say I’m goal oriented would be an understatement. Having battled depression my whole life, I consider working toward my goals my coping mechanism. It gets me up in the morning, helps me focus on the task at hand, and makes me learn something new to accomplish it. Because of my goals, I became a massage therapist, an acupuncturist, and now a published author of five novels with another due out soon.

2)  Every weekend from 1999 to 2001, I commuted from Michigan to Racine, Wisconsin to get my diploma in Acupuncture. The four-hour drive during winter through Chicago traffic scarred me. Now, I don’t like to drive unless I absolutely have to. My husband, Kraig, is my chauffeur. I prefer the navigator role. As much as I push myself out of my comfort zone, I still like to hide. Luckily, I can work from home. We all have quirks, and this is one of mine.

3)  My ideas for stories have come from a variety of places. In Their Rigid Rules, I made the hero Stuart Morgan a history professor as an ode to Kraig, who’s a history buff. Kraig even helped me with the history references. For Chemical Attraction, I became fascinated in nanotechnology after reading an article by Carol Ekarius in Alternative Medicine called, “Welcome to Nano World.” The plot for The Trucker’s Cat was hatched in our local truck stop diner. The Garden Collection came about from my childhood experience with a bully.

4)  My favorite website is IMDb.com. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is “the definitive collection of movie and television information and content.” Watching TV, I’m constantly asking Kraig if we’ve seen a particular actress in a different show. I’d look her up on the site. Somehow, I get lost in the site when I check the actress which takes me to her leading man in a different movie to what he’s working on now. After playing my own version of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” with the actress, I’ve missed half of the TV show. However, I consider this therapy to keeping my memory sharp. It beats playing Sudoku.

5)  I have a silly side. To amuse myself, I like to hide the used dryer sheets. After I fold our clothes, I take the leftover dryer sheets and hide them in places for Kraig to find later. He’s found them in his jean’s pocket, his wallet, his lunch cooler, and his book next to his bookmark. I once put one in his travel mug. He didn’t find it until after he poured his coffee. Oops. I recently put one in his DVD case of The Avengers. He’ll find that one when he watches all the Marvel movies in order … again.

6)  In December, I’ll turn fifty. One of the things I’d like to do is travel … as the navigator of course. We want to see Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon. I want to learn another language. Our bucket list has changed over the years. We’ve crossed some things off while adding a few others. I’d also like to see one of my novels on the big screen. I’m sure I’m not the only writer that dreams about their story concocted from their brains made into a movie. I mean, that’s how we see it when we write, right? The movie in our head plays and we write it down. I’m writing the script for Chemical Attraction to make that goal happen. Challenge accepted! I believe in myself and in miracles.

Care to share your quirk or silly side? Do you get lost in the maze of IMDb? Where do you get your story ideas? Do you see your books as movies in your head as you write?