I learned some valuable lessons about reading and writing when I was growing up. From the time I learned to read, I constantly had my nose in a book. Judy Bolton and Nancy Drew mysteries were my favorites. Good, clean stories with intriguing plots and characters I came to know and to love. More than anything I wanted to write mysteries like Margaret Sutton and Carolyn Keene when I grew up.
My father nourished my love of reading by bringing books home to me from time to time. Dad wasn’t much of a fiction reader but he knew how much I enjoyed a good mystery so, for a change of pace, one day when I was ten or eleven years old, he brought me a copy of “I, the Jury,” a Mickey Spillane novel. I picked it up and started to read, amazed and secretly pleased that Dad had given me such an “adult” book. A day or so later, I had left my book on the coffee table, book marker in place, and Dad happened to pick it up and read a page. His eyes got wide and he immediately confiscated the book. No more Mickey Spillane for me!