About the Author

Looking back, I suppose you could say that my writing career started when I was nine years old. I was thumbing through a catalog when I came across the perfect toy. It was a small printing press. Right away, I knew I had to have it even though at the time I wasn’t quite sure why.

I convinced my parents that I really needed the printing press. This was way before computers and printers made the job possible with the push of a button, and I think they were a little bewildered by my request. But, months of begging later, they finally caved and gave it to me as a gift.

Even though, it was a toy, the printing press worked much like a real one, only it was smaller and hand operated. A tray at one end held paper and a cylinder across the top held metal sleeves containing rubber letters of the words you wanted to print. After applying ink on the letters, you’d crank a handle to run paper through, and voila - a printed page would appear on the other end.

The summer after I received the printing press, a friend and I embarked on an ambitious project. Our plan was to use the printing press to earn a little money. Each evening, like junior reporters, we scoured our street looking for stories about our neighbours. We jotted notes in little notepads that we carried. Our neighbours weren’t the most exciting people so it took a while to gather enough material. Not that we minded. Combing the street, spying on people, hunting for stories, was fun.

After we had some material, we wrote stories based on our notes, then began the process of setting the stories into type on the printing press. Spelling each word with individual rubber letters was tedious and boring. We didn’t last long. Within a day, we gave up and abandoned the project, our dreams of quick cash gone.

Years later, I realized why the printing press was so important to nine-year-old me. I loved reading. I wanted to write stories of my own. Just as important, I wanted to set them into type so they looked professional and just like the stories in the books I was reading. The summer writing project might have been a failure, but I felt like a real author anyways.

In high school, I got turned on to science. I studied chemistry and physics at the University of Manitoba, secured a Bachelor of Science degree, then entered the Faculty of Education and eventually obtained a Masters of Education degree. I taught a variety of subjects and grades in public schools, mostly science to middle years kids, but other subjects and grade levels, too. I loved teaching, but the dream of writing books simmered in the background the entire time.

One day after school, I stopped for a hair cut on my way home. The place was busy. I had to wait my turn and with time to kill, I thumbed through a magazine. I spotted a full page ad with a catchy title: We’re looking for people to write children’s books. The ad was for a writing course, and seeing it rekindled the old dream. I enrolled and began to work on assignments that were mailed to me. To fit writing into my busy day, I started getting up earlier than usual, a habit I still have years later.

For one assignment, I was asked to write a non-fiction article for children. I looked for a topic and uncovered a fascinating story about a science demonstration that went the wrong way. There was an explosion (fortunately, no one was hurt), but the disaster led to an unexpected discovery. I used the story in my article, and submitted it. But, I was hooked by a larger idea. I looked for other stories where something unexpected - a mistake, blunder, freaky accident or fluky coincidence - led to a wonderful breakthrough in science. I wrote those stories up too, and by the time I finished the course I had a manuscript ready with more than 25 stories on the same theme. That collection of stories became my first Scholastic book –The Serendipity Effect (later re-issued under the title Accidental Discoveries: From Laughing Gas to Dynamite).