Look and Listen

Biography

I was born in Idaho, graduated from Idaho State University after three years of ROTC, and started working for the Forest Service after the usual jobs in college - waitressing, short order cooking, janitoring, truck driving, taking census - you name it, I probably did it. I transferred to southern Utah and started studying karate with John Holwager in 1981, married him and moved to Indiana in 1985. Got my black belt that same year. I taught computer stuff at Ivy Tech for a couple of years, managing the dojo and assistant teaching on the side. We moved to Colorado in 1989, and I was diagnosed with cancer that year. After a long recovery process, we moved back to southern Utah and started in the newspaper business. Since then we've lived in Oklahoma, Texas, Wisconsin, and Colorado again, and I've worked as a circulation person, a reporter, a feature writer, and a newspaper carrier. Nowadays I manage our current dojo and write on the side, between Patriot Guard missions and jaunts on either my Honda Reflex or my Yamaha VStar 650 Custom. John and I have written and published three books about Isshinryu Karate, and I'm currently gathering material for a book on Tai Chi, which has become my second art.

Inspiration

My parents were both great readers, and they read to me from the time I was born until I started reading the books to them. It wasn't long after that that I started making up stories in my head - daydreaming. I don't remember when I realized the stories I was reading were like the stories I was making up, but I do remember realizing that there was a bigger world out there and I could find it in books. And I remember the first science fiction books I ever read - E.E. "Doc" Smith's Skylark of Space and Alan E. Nourse's Star Surgeon. Against the usual glop they feed you in elementary school, they stood out like spotlights. When I was in high school, Arlene Baker encouraged me to "keep playing with words," and when I was in college I learned a lot about the discipline needed for writing from Dick Davidson. For the last many years, my inspiration and energy have been John's encouragement and support (and his occasional "that won't really work, you know.")