Good morning, Mary. What's up with you and your writing these days?

Hmm. Well I just quit my job at Navarro College, where I taught nursing, to go back to the real world of nursing in Labor and Delivery. I write YA and I received my first personal rejection from Lucienne Diver after she requested my full. It was very positive and she gave me a few suggestions on how to beef up my manuscript. Christine Hogrebe with Jane Rotrosen has it now. I'm expecting that refusal any day! Currently, I'm working on one about college students going to school in Rome.

Congrats on the request for the full and on the first rejection. That's great that Lucienne Diver gave you suggestions! Was the request through a conference?

Yes. It was through DARA’s Dreamin’ ‘N Dallas Conference back in April.

So, how long have you been writing fiction? Have you always written YA?

I've written most of my life. I used to send Carol Burnett poems hoping she'd read them on the air. I must have sent a dozen. I guess the replies from the Carol Burnett show were my first rejections! Anyway, I started writing in earnest in '96 shortly after my mom died. My mom had cancer and a few days before she died, she told me that she had no regrets. She encouraged me to always follow my dreams. I told her the only regret I had was that I never learned to type, because I'd always wanted to be a writer. She lay on her bed so weak and frail and sat up and said, "That's the stupidest damn reason I've ever heard for not following your heart. Don't you think by the time you finished the book you'd know how to type?" We laughed so hard I thought she was going to croak right then and there. She had a wonderful sense of humor. Anyway, after she passed I sat down and wrote my first manuscript. Judi McCoy is the only person who has seen it in its raw form. It was a fantasy and I didn't know it at the time, but it also was a YA. It was terrible. I used the word "suddenly" twenty-five times on the first page!

What a wonderful story. Who are your favorite authors? Who has influenced your writing?

I love Jude Devereaux, and of course Nora, Gerilyn Dawson, Judi McCoy, and Ken Follett -- just to name a few. But I think the writers who early on made me want to write were Jane Austin, C.S. Lewis and Pierce Anthony.

Tell us a little about yourself, where you're from, family, etc.

I was born in Dumas, Texas and spent my early years in Amarillo. When I was fourteen, I moved to Taos Ski Valley to go to school. It was awesome. I lived with two other kids and my tutor. We went to school half the day and skied the other half. I met my husband on October 30, 1980, when I asked him to dance. I didn't know it at the time, but he was on a date with another girl. I don't know what happened to the girl, but we danced the rest of the night and he took me home. We were married on October 30, 1982. We both graduated from Texas A&M. WHOOP! We have two daughters, Kate 22 and Mandy 21. The girls live together and are both seniors at The University of Dallas. Kate is a philosophy major with minors in Latin and Greek. Mandy is a sculpture major. We live in Waxahachie and have two horses -- make that one horse and a very flashy pony named Harry Potter, one dog and one cat.

What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?

Hmm, that is a hard question.  Snagging the worlds’ greatest husband and raising two awesome girls would be a given. So, I guess it'd be learning to connect so closely with my horse I could feel every footfall, each breath, and change his position with a subtle shift in my seat. It sounds easy, but it's taken me years.