I was born in east San Jose, California, the daughter of a railroad man and an Italian immigrant. I have two brothers, one older and one younger. As a youngster I did well in school, but probably not as well as I could have. I got my first paying job at age ten, which was summertime work picking prunes and cutting apricots with my older brother in the orchards not far from our home. We were fortunate, however, because we were allowed to keep the money we earned, while some of the other children were obliged to give it to their parents to help support their families. Later, as a teenager and young adult, I held several different jobs, including cannery work, soda-jerking, and answering phones in the circulation department of the San Jose Evening News, giving lame excuses to irate customers for missing, late, or rain-soaked papers. As for my soda-jerking days, well, my extra-thick chocolate milkshakes are legendary. One guy who really liked thick chocolate shakes was high school classmate Bob Howe. We were married while attending San Jose State University, where I earned a BA degree in English. After Bob received his teaching credential, we moved to San Bernardino, California, where he began teaching at San Bernardino High School while I stayed home with the children, as our family had begun to grow. I began writing and selling confession stories on a somewhat sparse but regular basis to magazines such as True Story and Modern Romances, promising myself I would try something more serious as soon as the children were older and the house became less chaotic. But for the time being, a part-time evening job at a telephone answering service was a welcome respite. We moved from San Bernardino to Sacramento when Bob took a position with the California State Department of Education. His book, Data Processing For Educators (with Alvin Grossman), was published soon after that. My husband and I made our first trip to Europe in the fall of 1981. We had such a great time roaming around Europe with our backpacks and Eurail Pass, we try to go back whenever we can.