Hi!

 I'm Sabrina!

I just wanted to tell you a little bit about myself and about my inspiration for writing my young adult novel, MAGNOLIA. 

Being a writer, I love to write and I feel like I’ve been writing forever.  Up until recently, and ever since I can remember, I’ve kept a daily journal.  I wrote about everything:  my love life, my good friends, my family, my dogs, my triumphs, my disappointments.  Every day I wrote about what I did day to day (even what I wore to work and ate for dinner) and I enjoyed every minute that I wrote. 

Now you’re probably wondering what happened recently that I’m not able to write in my journal on a daily basis anymore.  You’re probably wondering, is it because I spend all my time writing novels?  Or is it because I’ve lost inspiration in my own life? 

Well, I have to say I do spend a couple hours a day working on my novels, but no, I have not lost inspiration in my own life.  The answer is simple.  My life has changed.  For the better.  Instead of devoting all my time to journal writing, my time is spent taking care of my three amazing children, all boys to be exact, and at the time of writing this, they are still all under the age of three.  It doesn’t leave me a lot of time to do daily journal writing. 

I have twin boys, Holden and Colby, who are going to be three in March (2005), and Adin, who is going to be eighteen months in March (2005).  Instead of my own journal, I keep a family journal now—one that is used to document and capture all my boys’ crazy, funny, interesting, and heart-warming antics, milestones, and amusements. 

So, now as I write this bio I will relive some of those wonderful and not-so-wonderful moments from my life and I will let you in on some of the wonderful and not-so-wonderful things I call life.

I was born in the Presidio in San Francisco, California, on June 26, 1965.  (I am very much a cancer.)  I love San Francisco, but after I was born we didn’t stay long for me to get to know the city at all.  I am the second of four girls born to my dad, Richard, an anesthesiologist, and my mom, Mary, a stay-at-home mom.  My older sister, Diana, was born in Houston, Texas.  My younger sisters, Julie and Linda, were born in Seattle, Washington, and Colorado Springs, Colorado, respectively.  Because of my dad’s medical schooling and training, we didn’t stay in one place very long and we moved around. A lot.  Maybe that is why I love to travel.  I experienced it at a young age and those experiences stayed with me.  

After my youngest sister, Linda, was born, we settled in Grand Junction, Colorado, where my dad started his anesthesiology practice and I started elementary school.  However, we didn’t stay long.  My parents got divorced and my mom, my sisters, and I moved back to my mom’s hometown of Poulsbo, Washington, where I spent my school age years from first grade until graduation from high school.  While I was growing up, Poulsbo was a small Norwegian town on the Kitsap Peninsula of Puget Sound, a ferry boat ride from Seattle.  It has since been developed tremendously and I’m sad to say that I have a hard time calling it home anymore.

I attended Poulsbo Elementary, North Kitsap Middle School, and North Kitsap High School.  I graduated in 1983.  People either love high school or they hate it.  I don’t really know how to describe my experience.  I didn’t really love it and I didn’t really hate it.  So I guess the best way to describe my high school years is they were so-so.  Just like everyone, I wanted and I tried to be popular.  My four years went something like this:  I got good grades—my favorite subjects were English and chemistry; I ran long distance in track—the mile and two-mile races were my favorites; I was in the marching band—I played saxophone.  I attended dances and I dated a couple boys—nothing serious.  I had a lot of friends.  Some I still keep in touch with.  Did I have any highlights?  The biggest highlight for me happened at the end of my sophomore year when I made cheerleader for my junior year.  I was on the basketball cheer squad my junior and senior years and I loved it!  When I was a cheerleader I felt like I was finally popular, but looking back, I really don’t think I was.

I lived for summer!  Every summer my sisters and I would spend part of the summer in Grand Junction, Colorado, with my dad, step-mother, and step-sister, Barbara.  This may surprise you, but I loved it!  Colorado is magnificent in the summer and I couldn’t wait to get away from the dreary Seattle weather.  During the week in Grand Junction, we’d get our chores done early, and then we’d go to the Lincoln Park pool and swim all afternoon.  In the evenings after dinner, we’d ride our bikes all over the neighborhood or jump on the trampoline.  Sometimes we even slept outside on the trampoline. 

My dad loves the outdoors, so on the weekends, he’d take us hiking and camping and fishing.  Every year we’d spend a week at Lake Powell, Utah, and just swim and water-ski and boat all over the lake.  He also would take us to these really remote campgrounds where there were only pit toilets or no toilets at all.  (My dad did not believe in showering for a week, at least, by the way.)  Maybe if he was raising boys that would have been okay, but as we got older, my sisters and I really missed running water and I don’t mean the freezing-cold creek that ran beside the tent. 

But even though we roughed it, there are so many great things I can say about the wonderful places that he took us.  He showed us the most incredible scenery, the most beautiful waterfalls, and the most amazing wildlife you could ever imagine.  From moose to porcupines to prairie dogs and antelope.  He gave me such a wonderful appreciation of nature that will stay with me forever. 

When I was seventeen, I got a job at Lincoln Park teaching swimming lessons and life guarding.  I adored the kids and the kids adored me.  I made a lot of friends.  I worked at the pool for two summers and it was the best!  My last summer in Grand Junction was the summer of 1985.  Although I haven’t been to Grand Junction in a very long time, I still think about it all the time.   

After high school, fall 1983-spring 1985, I attended the University of Washington (Huskies) in Seattle, Washington.  I didn’t really think about where I’d go to college.  Since my older sister, Diana, attended the UW and since I applied and got in, it just seemed like the obvious place to go.  But I had no direction.  No focus.  Every trimester I changed my major:  from pre-med to education, from archeology to forestry.  I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.  Then I realized I had to get out of Seattle and get away…

I really wanted to see the east coast—all the history, the Atlantic Ocean, New York City. . .  So I applied for a job as a nanny and I got a job in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

I worked for a family with three children.  While I was working there, I picked up a Flying magazine that was lying around the house.  I was so fascinated by it that I read it cover to cover and decided that flying was what I wanted to do.  I wanted to be an airline pilot.  That would be so fun, so cool, and something I had never even thought of.  Growing up I never had the dream or even thought about learning how to fly.  When my parents got divorced my sisters and I were put on a plane at a very young age by ourselves to visit my dad in Colorado.  But that was the extent of my flying—shuffling back and forth from Seattle to Grand Jct. and spending many hours in the Denver airport in between.  So if I wanted to be an airline pilot, how would I do it?  Where would I go to school?  Where would I learn how to fly?  And what about college? 

Wanderlust struck me again and in May, 1986, I grabbed my younger sister, Julie, and we hit the road and moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania!  I had only planned to stay the summer, but three months turned into thirteen years! 

That winter (January 1987) I enrolled in college at Widener University near Philadelphia, taking classes for a biology degree.  Since I loved nature and camping and anything that had to do with being outdoors, I thought getting a degree in biology I could work for the National Park Service or the Environmental Protection Agency.  But I was still fascinated with the idea of being able to fly.  I decided I needed to take a flight and see if I even liked it.  I drove out to a small flight school and took my first introductory flight.  I loved it!  And I was ready to start flying!  But the flight instructor discouraged me.  He told me the airlines weren’t hiring and to stay in school and get a degree in something I could fall back on.  Then if I was still interested in flying after I graduated, to come back and learn to fly.

So that’s what I did.  In 1990, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and instead of working for the NPS or the EPA, I started working in the pharmaceutical industry.  You may be wondering how I ended up there.  During school I was working in a hospital as a nurse’s aide and a pharmacy technician.  I worked with a lot of pharmacy students and that’s how I gravitated toward that industry.  Plus there are so many companies on the east coast it was easy to find work and the pay was good. 

So, I was living in Philadelphia, I was making good money, I had my dog Dublin, I had my own car, I had my own apartment in a really cool neighborhood—Wissahickon--on a really cool street--Sumac Street—where a lot of really cool single people lived, I had a lot of fun friends, I was dating casually, I traveled a lot:   Canada, Mexico, Greece, and South America:  Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay.  But something was missing.  I realized I still really wanted to learn how to fly, so I did. 

I started taking lessons in 1992 and in 1993, I earned my private pilot certificate.

To build up cross-country time for my instrument rating, I flew with Rodger, another private pilot, and we flew all over the east coast together!  We would go every weekend to somewhere new and we’d shop, have lunch, sightsee, rent bikes, lay on the beach, whatever was the thing to do at the place we went to.  We flew to:  Kitty Hawk, N.C.; Outer Banks, N.C.; Williamsburg, V.A.; St. Michaels, M.D.; Pittsburgh, P.A.; Bar Harbor, M.E.; Block Island, R.I.; Fredericksburg, M.D., and everywhere in between. 

Then I got instrument rating, commercial certificate, and multi-engine rating.  In 1996, I earned my Flight Instructor Certificate and I did the unthinkable thing:  I quit my good paying job and started flight instructing full-time, making $6000 a year.  Looking back I don’t know how I did it. 

While I was teaching, I earned my CFII—certified flight instructor for instruments--to teach students to become instrument rated pilots, and my MEII—multi-engine instructor for instruments—to teach students to become multi-engine rated pilots.  I loved my job, except for the pay.  It was hard to be at the airport morning until night working for so little, but in order to make it to the airlines I needed to build up my flight time and the cheapest way to do it was to instruct.

Since I was now flying and I also had my biology degree, I wanted to do something that I could combine both my skills.  So while I was instructing, I got involved with the Environmental Air Force, a non-profit flying organization that helped wildlife.  I flew many flying missions with them, which included dolphin surveying in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Virginia, and transporting a rehabilitated harbor seal from Baltimore back to the wild in Maine.  My short story, Stranded, was based on this flying experience.  It’s featured in last year’s local anthology, Portfolio North (2004). 

Now you’re probably wondering—did I ever fly for the airlines?  The answer is no.  While I was flight instructing, I met a guy named Steve and we got married.  After we got married in 1997, I couldn’t live on $6000 a year anymore, so I got a consulting job in the pharmaceutical industry and continued to flight instruct on my own time—after work and weekends.  I made my own schedule and had my own students and it was much better for me.  I continued building up my flight time, but my priorities had changed.  I realized now that I was married, I didn’t want a job where I’d be traveling all the time.   

Steve, and I left Philadelphia and moved to Redding, California in 1999.  Steve started working as an interventional radiologist and I started writing.  I had this book inside of me that was just bursting to come out and I finally had the time to write it.  I worked on it a long time, revising:  taking writing classes to help revise it, joining critique groups to help me revise it.  It has really evolved.  I feel like I have a good message to bring to teenagers from my flying experiences and from my love for nature.  So that’s how Magnolia came to be.   And I’m excited to write more flying and environmental adventures for Magnolia. 

Now, you’re probably wondering how did I become interested in writing for teenagers?  Well, I just think the teenage years are fascinating and fun and angst-ridden and so wonderful and terrible all at the same time.  When I was a teen I loved to read.  My favorite authors were Judy Blume, Stella Pevsner, Barbara Corcoran, and Lois Lowry.  I loved the Nancy Drew series.  My all time favorite book is The Ghost Next Door, which was written by Willy Folk St. John and illustrated by my favorite illustrator ever:  Trina Schart Hyman.  I read every book that she illustrated from A Room Made of Windows to Caddie Woodlawn to The Marrow of the World and everything in between.  Reading was my escape, whether it was fantasy or reality. 

Even now as an adult I read and love young adult novels.  I live for the Gossip Girl series, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, and the Jessica Darling books.  And I am a total Harry Potter fan.  I also adore Sarah Dessen, Joan Bauer, Dyan Sheldon, and Laurie Halse Anderson.  Right now I’m reading a good book called The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson and I’m looking forward to reading The Au Pairs by Melissa de la Cruz.  There are so many wonderful books to read.  

In March 2002, my twin boys, Holden and Colby were born, and in September 2003, my son Adin was born.  I love being a mom more than anything.  And I love being able to be home with them.  We have a crazy household though.  We also have three dogs: Dublin and Molly, who are soft-coated wheaten terriers, and Sidney, who is a black lab.      

I have to admit that sometimes I feel those pangs that I’d love to be a flying biologist, but 

I love being able to be home with my three boys and write whenever I can.  My second novel, Wings for Wildlife, will be coming out soon.  

And yes—I can’t wait to take my three boys camping with no showers for a week!