I was born in a log cabin in Illinois - no that wasn't me! I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, grew up outside of Philadelphia with two parents, along with a wild assortment of brothers and sisters and cats and dogs. I did things like take music lessons and play relievo or baseball in the sideyard with the neighborhood kids. Went to school, which I really hated, but somehow managed to get through anyway. I was smart, but, boy, you couldn't tell it by my grades. Well, maybe I didn't do my homework, but I read. If it didn't move, I read it. Chances are, I wrote about it, too, in the diary I kept all through my childhood. I've heard that that's called taking notes. Eventually, despite engaging in various activities called play that periodically involved knocking myself out, I grew up. This much amazed my grandmother who said I lived a charmed life. After graduating from Radnor High School, I attended Temple University, graduating with a music education degree. During my college years, I met my husband, a young man named John with a cute smile and a wonderful sense of humor. I married him quick before he had a chance to get away. Ah, young love! Since that time, we've had one adventure after another together, raising children, one daughter and two sons, and our love is still young. Despite John's gray hair, he still looks twenty years old to me. What do I do when I'm not writing? Visit friends, ride my bike, sometimes with John, sometimes not. Hiking. I love to attend plays, too. Some of my recent favorites: Doubt, The Drowsy Chaperone, Eggs.

Francess Lin Lantz (b. August 27, 1952, Trenton, New Jersey—d. November 22, 2004, Santa Barbara, California) was an American children's librarian turned fiction writer, whose fan base was mostly preteen and teenaged girls. For more than two decades, Lantz wrote more than 30 books, including several juvenile bestsellers. She won the American Library Association's Best Book for Young Adults award for her 1997 romance, Someone to Love. Stepsister from Planet Weird (Random House, 1996) was made into a Disney Channel television movie in 2000. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Lantz was raised in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She initially aspired to become a rock musician and composer. She graduated in 1974 from Dickinson College (in Pennsylvania) and from Simmons College (in Boston) in 1975, where she earned a master's degree in library sciences. She died in Santa Barbara, California in 2004 following a five years long battle with ovarian cancer; she was 52 years old.

"My mother taught me to read before I started school, but I had to wait to be six before I could have a library card."[ Author's quote from her website.] "In 25 years, I wrote 40 books. Most of them came out under my own name, but a few were published under the name T.J. Bradstreet."[ Author's quote from her website.] She lives in Washington State, and is a member of The Authors Guild and the Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.[ Houghton Mifflin website] Jean Thesman is a popular and award-winning novelist for young adults whose predominant theme is the heroine finding her place in the world by coming to understand her family. "I loved telling the story, because I really believed that families were made up of the people you wanted, not the people you were stuck with." —Emily Shepherd[Jean Thesman, In the House of the Queen's Beasts (Viking, 2001, p.79).]

Carol Ellis is an American author of young adult and children’s fiction. Her first novel, My Secret Admirer, was published in 1989 by Scholastic as part of their popular Point Thriller line. She went on to write over fifteen novels, including a few titles in the Zodiac Chillers series published by Random House in the mid-1990s, and two titles in The Blair Witch Files series for young adults, published by Bantam between 2000 and 2001.