Evelyn in Transit is my seventh published novel and thirteenth book.  There are other books I either didn't finish because they hit dead ends or finished without feeling good about them.

I started out writing short stories.  I published five in periodicals, and put those in an envelope along with five others, and sent them off to publishers in New York with a cover letter addressed to "Dear Editor."  They came back to me twice, but the third time someone called and said yes, and that was how my first book, The Country Ahead of Us, The Country Behind, came to be published.

An editor at Harper's read it, then got in touch to ask if I would write something for that magazine, and I said yes.  After my essay appeared in its pages, an editor from a publishing house got in touch to ask if I would consider expanding it into a book, and I said yes to that too, and that's how my second book, Family Matters: Why Homeschooling Makes Sense, came to be published.

This seems like the right time to say that I'm not a homeschooling advocate, but that I do find it interesting, and do think it belongs in our society as one option among many.

Anyway, after that second book was published, I shared with my editor a book I'd been working on for 10 years or so while working as a public school teacher.  That book, Snow Falling on Cedars, became my first published novel.

Since then I've gone on writing novels and short stories, but also poetry and non-fiction.  I've written for a lot of publications in the manner of a journalist, and have contributed to other people's books by writing forewords and introductions, and have traveled a lot to talk about my books, but not as much as some writers, because what I really like is to be at home actually writing for about half the day and doing other things with the rest of my time.

The other things are simple.  I like to be outdoors.  I like to roam.  I like to read poetry.  I'm curious, in the sense of "interested in things", so I go down a lot of rabbit holes and am content to stay there for a long time with no purpose other than to be there.  It's probably not a stretch to say that I'm in love with the world.  Everything fascinates me.