Remember that painfully shy girl in middle school who hid behind a curtain of long straight hair? Of course you don’t! Denise Waldron’s hair is shorter now and no one who knows her would call her shy. Her interest in writing piqued considerably when her 8th grade English teacher read a student’s work aloud and then announced it was Denise’s, and a fellow student looked at her wide-eyed and exclaimed, “YOU wrote that?” It didn’t hurt that he was cute and had never noticed her before. She still gets a thrill when she sees her writing published.

After years of writing programming code and technical documentation she quit her job and turned to what she calls “early childhood education”: raising children. Now the children are older and she has found the time to write for fun, and it is fun or she wouldn’t be doing it, because she’s very busy. She works for various non-profit groups in town, plays on a league tennis team, and participates in a conversational Spanish group where after three years she can understand almost everything and speak about as well as your average two-year-old. She’s interested in cooking, gardening, the environment, nutrition, and is an NPR junkie.

There are three signs tacked to Denise’s desk: “Stop Me Before I Volunteer Again”, “Ginger Rogers Did Everything Fred Astaire Did Only Backwards And In High Heels”, and “I’ll Try Being Nicer If You Try Being Smarter”. Denise has one completed novel, one on the way, and ideas for four more. Surprisingly, no agents have come to her door asking if she has any books she’d like published.