Writing has always been my "thing," despite that D I got in handwriting in second grade (thanks a lot Mrs. Whatever Your Name Was). Early on I learned I could boost my flagging math grades by writing extra-credit reports. I figured if I couldn't compute, at least I could snow-job my way into a better grade. Ah, the fine art of fiction writing.

As I grew up, void of more remunerative skills, I pursued a writing-related career. I wrote and edited for my college newspaper, worked in radio, was even a TV news reporter (don't ask). I earned a degree in broadcast journalism from Penn State, but quickly abandoned the TV career because I hated helmet hair, a job prerequisite at the time. I'll admit I was envious, watching all those college friends with business degrees racking in the big bucks in corporate America while I floundered in debt working at poverty level as a publicist on Capitol Hill. But after a while I got used to having my mattress on the floor, cardboard boxes for dresser drawers, and ramen noodles for dinner every night. Eventually I became a "glamorous" Washington photographer, shooting an eclectic range of events and people (including Prince Charles!). I knew I had arrived when I shot a World Welter Weight Boxing Championship and got spattered by the fighters' blood and saliva from my vantage point along the apron.

But marriage and motherhood beckoned, and those professional "glory days" gave way to the raising of three children. The only writing I did for many years were grocery lists and an annual holiday letter to family and friends. I re-launched my writing career with the onset of a terrible drought in my state a few years ago. It dawned on me that with water rationing in place, no one would dare have a holiday party. After all, who could host a hundred houseguests for four hours of festive drinking yet ban them from using the bathroom? All that flushing would alert the water police! And so I wrote about it. Lucky for me, an editor immediately bought the story, which deluded me into believing that publishing was a piece of cake. Well, that piece of cake quickly grew stale, as I tried to sell more witty essays, with mixed success.

I did eventually sell more of my writing, and my generous mother bought me a laptop, which enabled me to write while at soccer practice, which opened up a whole new world of opportunities for a mom on the run as I am. And so I continued to hone my craft, joining writers groups (RWA, VRW, WRW, LLL, and Backspace, all wonderful resources, among others) and researching the industry, only to discover that creative non-fiction doesn't sell unless you have a standing time-slot on National Public Radio and your name is David Sedaris, or you have a tendency to do stupid things like stage your own kidnapping in order to escape an ill-conceived wedding. I kept writing, and reading, and as I read other peoples' books I kept saying to myself, "I can write this well!" And thus began my fiction phase. As a journalist by training, I never dreamed I'd actually make up things for publication. I guess there are those journalists who do that, but they're not exactly supposed to. But I learned quickly that fabricating information up was pretty liberating--not being constrained by such nuisances as facts made it that much easier for me.

It's exciting to come full circle with Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me, as I love to write slice-of-life stories, and feel so very fortunate to be able to straddle both the non-fiction and fiction worlds in the publishing business.

I owe a debt of gratitude to my high school Latin and English teacher, Jay Bush, who read aloud Jean Shepherd's In God We Trust All Others Pay Cash to his students each year before Christmas break. Who says teens don't like to have stories read to them? Mr. Bush motivated me to strive for excellence, at least in English and Latin. Shame I didn't have him for math. And that memorable memoir taught me how easily one can be transformed to another time, place or world, with powerful writing.

Fun (or not so fun, as the case may be) facts about me: I love accents and drive my kids nuts by repeating sentences spoken in foreign-accented English that I hear while regularly listening to the BBC and NPR. I love to cook but sometimes regret what I've gotten myself into when meals take hours to prepare. I brake for farmer's markets and am a huge advocate of the Buy Local movement. I have nearly 4000 songs on my iPod, which is I think the first iPod ever made (and is as big as a pack of cigarettes). If given the chance to wash muddy dogs that have rolled in deer poop and plodded through swamp muck or clean my house, I'd choose the dog-washing. I'm incapable of going to the movies without ordering popcorn, even when I see them lugging in months-old stale popcorn by the garbage bagful to dump into the popcorn machine for appearances' sake. I could give a care about most sports but am always loyal to all Pittsburgh teams and Penn State, natch. I am itching to get back to Italy. And lastly, by my rough calculations, I have cleaned up nearly 400,000 parrot poops in the past two decades.