While doing research for Luciana: Braving the Deep, I scuba dived to the bottom of an underwater astronaut trainer where I played catch with a 100-pound ball of concrete and tossed bowling balls through basketball nets. I kept up with my deadlines for this project by writing 2,000 words each morning before the sun came up (before emails, before social media, before my dear children woke up). I went to Space Camp twice while working on the Luciana books and never once threw up on the multi-axis trainer. There is a reference to this childhood trauma in all of my books (Luciana, p. Growing up, my brother would put a book with a massive and hairy tarantula under my pillow for me to find when I climbed into bed. I have a hound dog named Beaker, who only wants to cuddle, and a bunny named Peanut Butter Fluffbottom, who only wants to be the boss of Beaker. On the bright side, I can draw from a real-life experience when writing scenes where my characters feel trapped, wrongfully imprisoned, or are considering a high-stakes escape. RELATED: I once was quarantined for five days on a cruise ship stricken with the norovirus. I have a fear of cruise ships, spider crickets, and corn mazes. I worked in a biochemistry lab doing drug research for more than ten years-handling dangerous chemicals, doing complicated math problems in my head, but mostly gathering material to write books for kids.
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