Look and Listen

Biography

Debra was born in LaCrosse, Kansas in 1968. Because she had the good fortune to be born into a family of readers, Debra has been making up stories practically since the day she learned how to talk. She received her bachelor's degree in psychology and her master's degree in social work from the University of Kansas. Over the years, Debra has written hundreds of pieces including internet articles, short stories, brochures, blog entries, online classes, marketing materials, etc. Her novel, Visiting Grandma, was published in 2003. She is currently working on a sequel. When not pursuing her two loves--social work and writing--Debra enjoys reading, traveling, and playing with her thoroughly spoiled cats.

Inspiration

I like to write to fill in gaps in areas of knowledge or to tell stories that haven't been told before. The idea for Visiting Grandma, for instance, was born from two experiences. The first was working with an adult male victim of child sexual abuse. The second was observing a teenager who frequently came to visit his grandmother in the nursing home where I worked. As I thought about these two experiences, the voice of "Danny," the protagonist of Visiting Grandma, sprang into my head and stayed with me for the year it took to write and revise my novel about a courageous teen being molested by his mother's boyfriend. He finds comfort in visiting his grandmother, even as she slips further away from him into a world of dementia.