I’ve just recently got the first one under my belt … my first self-published book. Can you guess what comes after the congratulations from friends and family? You guessed it! Most people ask, “Are you going to write another one?”

Are vampires evil was a question that I asked myself a lot when I was given the idea to write my very own novel by a coworker of mine. As an avid reader my coworker John Voldstad was interested in the books that I was reading and the way in which I retold the stories to him. From the passion that he felt and saw in my eyes he knew then that I was a writer, a story teller long before I ever knew that I could do this. From the time that I was a child books were my escape. They allowed me to travel to far away lands without ever having to leave my room. Bram Stoker’s Dracula and The Lost Boys introduced me to the world of vampires and when I discovered them in books I was hooked.

            I’ve just had my twentieth book published.

            From 1990-1992, I lived in Nome, Alaska, a small community on the Bering Sea coast where I taught college writing classes, mostly over phone. I also traveled to villages where my students lived. I wrote extensively about my experiences and in 1996 met a publisher at a conference who invited me to send a poetry manuscript. Two years later he returned it, with suggestions. A month later I resubmitted it. In 2000 it was published.

The dive team carefully reviews the diagram of the cenote’s complex interior. We’re about to embark on deadly dive into a myriad of caves and black water chambers, where sacrificial bones of the ancient Mayans lay undisturbed for centuries. Little do I realize that within a few moments I would be facing a similar sacrificial fate.