After ALIENS FOR BREAKFAST, and ALIENS FOR LUNCH, which we also co-wrote, I began to think that writing could be interesting fun.Īnd now that I’ve been doing it full-time for more than ten years, I can tell you why I like it better than a job. Jon (who died of heart disease in 1990) was a close friend with a wild sense of humor, and collaborating with him changed my opinion of writing forever. Then, to my amazement, I found myself writing a book and having a good time - simultaneously! The book was ALIENS FOR BREAKFAST, and I enjoyed writing it because my co-author was Jonathan Etra. Writing seemed like torture by comparison. I edited some wonderfully talented authors - Virginia Hamilton, Philip Isaacson, Clyde Robert Bulla, Gloria Whelan, Robin McKinley, Joan Vinge, Garth Nix, and Chris Lynch, among others - with great enjoyment. I scoffed at the idea that I had anything to write about. I found that I liked children’s books a lot, and before long, I became an editor. So I took another publishing job, this time in children’s books.
Only a few hundred Americans collected thangkas, and they wanted old ones, painted by Tibetan monks. Each one took anywhere from several weeks to a few months to complete, and at long last I understood that this was not the ideal way for me to make a living. I came back to America, wandered around some more - to Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize - and on returning to New York decided to study Tibetan Buddhist painting (called thangka painting) in Boulder, Colorado. I read so much bad fiction that I needed a break, so I moved to London, and from there I traveled to Morocco, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan India, Nepal, and Ceylon. I went to college in Bennington, Vermont, moved to New York City, and took a job in publishing so I could get paid for reading. I read straight through my childhood, with breaks for food, sleep, and the bathroom. I was born in Davenport, Iowa, and grew up in Rockaway Beach, New York.
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