Hey there! I’m Marley. I have been writing as long as I can remember. I know...I know...every writer says that, but it’s true. My grandmother Helen (a writer herself) taught me early on to use my imagination. She said that our imaginations could take us to far away worlds and we could be anyone we wanted to be. (There I am, top left, making a splash in her kindergarten reading class -- we even made the local paper!) I remember playing in her kitchen and using my imagination with things, drawing, writing, building, you name it. What a tool this imagination thing was! I wondered if everyone knew about this. My imagination carried me to creating a whole world in my room called "Animaltown,” complete with families, a mayor, a school and frequent beauty pageants. On my brother’s Royal typewriter (complete with manual carriage return and no correction tape...hello, it was the late 70’s!), I typed out the full names (of course everyone had middle names) of all my animal families from oldest to youngest. We had weddings and births (made a lot of mice and dogs on my Knit Magic machine) and proms and New Year’s Eve parties (stay with me...this gives you an idea of where my professional career was headed) and Animaltown even had a high school with a football team, cheerleaders and a school paper. I used to take pictures with my dad’s Brownie Hawkeye camera and write the paper, complete with articles, gossip and pictures. The first writing efforts I can remember were assignments my grandmother used to give us in kindergarten. We’d make the stories into books and illustrate them and put covers on them held together with brackets or braided ribbon. When I was six, I held an auction for my family for stories I’d written. I acted as the auctioneer and my very accommodating family sat and bid quarter for these childish missives. I’ve always been a voracious reader, too. From all the Dr. Seuss books to Frog and Toad are Friends to Runaway Ralph to The Trumpet of the Swan and Charlotte’s Web to reading my sister’s Nancy Drew mysteries and my brother’s Hardy Boys series. I got all of the Little House books and read them at least ten times each. I got my hands on Judy Blume books and remember loving Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret. I mean, who didn’t love that book? In 1978 (fifth grade), there was a summer reading contest at my local library. I signed up in my age group to read as many books as I possibly could over the summer months. I took first prize, won a stuffed frog and a $50 gift certificate! Soon after that, I discovered romance novels when I snuck into my sister’s room and swiped her Kathleen Woodiwiss books like Ashes in the Wind, The Flame and the Flower, The Wolf and the Dove and Shanna. I also discovered, The Thorn Birds which was like nothing I’d ever read. In 1981-ish, Silhouette Books came out with a line that had to have been designed with me in mind. These were books about young love...first love...and appropriately called First Love by Silhouette. Sure, I’d been sneaking my older sister’s Harlequins and Silhouettes (that was back when they were actually two separate companies), but when First Love came out, I knew these were books meant just for me. Stories of ordinary girls in all-American cities hanging with their friends, meeting boys, doing teenage things and falling in love for the first time. The First Love books moved me so much that I started writing one myself on formerly said Royal typewriter. I actually got pretty far in it...like 50 or so pages. Really good, too. It was based on my best friend at the time and her new boyfriend and how they met. When I was 15, I remember First Love having a contest for cover models. They wanted “regular looking” teens from across America to compete and win a cover. My mother and I took a ton of pictures in my grandmother’s backyard – me with my long, winged-banged hair, white painter pants and a lot of cheesy poses. In high school, I did all the typical things: varsity cheerleader, first trumpet in the marching/concert band (note the band geek on the left, 1982 Best Brass winner), honor society, class officer every year, Anchor club (high school sorority), yearbook staff (I was head photographer), kept books for the basketball team, played girl’s softball and generally hang out with my friends. The summer between ninth and tenth grades was a little challenging as I discovered I had cancer (in my leg – periosteal osteosarcoma – and had to spend three months in the hospital undergoing three surgeries, chemo and radiation.) However, my imagination kept me going and I remember telling my mother I could write a story about it one day. (Maybe I still will!) I lost all of my hair, but it was the year our football team decided to shave their heads because they thought it made them “tougher.” So, all the opposing schools just thought one of the cheerleaders had that much school spirit, too, that she shaved her head. Worked for me! My senior year, I was named as Senior’s Who’s Who as “Most School Spirit” and “Most Talented” (see staged picture on the right.) And okay...I got “Most Talkative,” too, but we won’t go there. After graduation, I began college at my parents’ alma mater, The University of Alabama. Okay...that’s not why I went there. I went for football. What? So sue me. But, I had a great college experience. I met tons of people from all over the world, pledged a sorority, was a Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity little sister and ended up meeting and dating my future husband. I was on the school Spirit Committee, on the SGA and active in politics. My best buddy and I spent hours riding around Tuscaloosa, singing songs, hanging out with the football players who all went on to the NFL to make a trazillion dollars more than she or I ever did. There were tons of fraternity parties, late night studying, dorm shenanigans (ever been mattressed into a room?!), sorority Rush, summer internships, class assignments and wondering what in the world we were going to do with our futures. No, I didn’t marry the quarterback of the Crimson Tide, but I did marry my wonderful college sweetheart, who I’d been pinned to and then engaged. (My engagement picture is on the left...was also my sorority composite picture.) He had moved to Washington, DC, to pursue working in politics and after my graduation from Bama, I followed and we got married in Old Town Alexandria. He did political and non-profit fundraising and I worked on Capitol Hill in my first job for my parents’ congressman. I booked tours for constituents, handled military academy appointments, wrote correspondence, got the congressman cheeseburgers and milk for lunch and even had the opportunity to drive his Mercedes out to Arlington to collect a lawnmower part for him. (Just don’t ask me to tell you about the Thanksgiving turkey he left in said Mercedes that his wife found...at Easter!) It was a great first job out of college and I was living in DC! After that, we moved to Austin, Texas where I worked for the local congressman, J.J. “Jake” Pickle. I know...go ahead and make your Congressman Pickle jokes, but the man was an American institution. He worked for LBJ, was John Connally’s best man and JFK was on his way to do a fundraiser for Mr. Pickle in 1964 when he was tragically assassinated. In my time with Congressman Pickle, I was thrilled to help constituents...mainly through my writing. On a daily basis, I would churn out about ten-twelve letters on the congressman’s behalf. It was our job to help with any problems with federal agencies and facilitate communication. I was definitely putting my writing skills to work. In 1992, my husband and I moved to Boston – my place of birth – where I said I always wanted to return. Through the years, I’ve worked as an event planner (remember those proms and beauty pageants I planned in Animaltown?!) in the health care, financial, building and higher education arenas. I did a five year stint in the dot.com work before it went dot.bomb, but in the back of my head, during all of my events, tradeshows, conferences and traveling, I longed to write. Stories that had been building in my head for years, through all my experiences and all the wonderful people I’d met along the way. In January 2001, I stepped away from the high stress dot.bomb world and I told my husband I was either going to cooking school (I’m a fabu chef!) or I was going to start seriously writing. We investigated cooking schools and I was horrified to learn that a working chef should plan on gaining at least twenty-five pounds and I said not just “no,” but “hell no” to cooking school. (It also cost $35,000!) Instead, I could sit in solitude and write the stories of the characters that lived in my imagination. I could do what my grandmother Helen always told me to do. So, I started writing. And writing. And writing. When I finished the first novel, it was 863 pages of really great vignettes put together without a plot or character development, goal, motivation or conflict. Okay, there was some conflict, but not enough to sustain 863 pages. Who did I think I was...Margaret Mitchell? But it got me writing. And I haven’t stopped. I joined the Romance Writers of America, started going to conferences, entered contests and met people. I wrote many manuscripts, got an agent, submitted to editors, came really close a couple of times and gathered a large stack of rejection letters that nicely suggestion I try some place else. Then, my friend, Liz Maverick, said, “you’ve totally got a YA voice, you should try your hand at that.” And thus started my young adult writing. I obtained a beyond-fabulous new agent in the summer of 2005 and six months later, I got a book deal to write my sorority books. They will be out in May 2008. As far as my “real” life, my non-writing life, I live outside of Boston with my husband, best friend and personal webmaster (didn’t he do a great job with the site?), Mike (there we are on the left in Miami's South Beach looking all tanned.) Like every regular schmuck, I commute into the city daily, work my 8-5 job, lunch with my ladies and spend my free time writing. I’m an avid reader, closet gourmet chef, hockey fanatic and I still love my Crimson Tide football. I’m addicted to surfing the Internet, listening to House/Dance/Trance music and I know it’s clichéd, but collecting fabulous shoes. I always wear black, my preferred color, and I love turkey sandwiches – could eat them for every meal. I e-mail people way too much, drink way too much (caffeine free) Diet Coke, and I have a stack of books next to my bed that resembles the library of a small country. I love to use my imagination and I hope I never, ever lose the fervor to create characters, worlds and stories.