I grew up mostly in rural New York State, where fun meant getting your hands on a tractor tire tube and spending a few hours navigating the local creek (pronounced crick). Now I live in Sackets Harbor New York, which is snowball-chucking distance to both Canada and the Adirondack Mountains, depending on which direction you chuck the snowball. I’ve been a newspaper reporter, a cemetery fence painter, a drive-through window worker, and a writer of many things, including How To Operate Your New Air Conditioner Guides and most recently, the Delacorte Award-winning novel, Skin Deep. I am married with one teen daughter. And of course I have pets, including a silver Newfoundland named Buoy.

I love hiking and water skiing and reading and traveling. I write nearly every day. I love books that allow the reader to feel like a member of the cast of characters, and some of my favorite authors are Roald Dahl, Laurie Halse Anderson, Marcus Zusak, and Robert Cormier.

Some Things About My Life and Skin Deep

• My husband is an artist like Honora. Other than the part about being a boy instead of a girl.
• I never defaced the bathroom walls in high school. If you saw the walls of my writing room, you wouldn't believe me.
• Zena was real. She died just six months before the release of Skin Deep at the too-young age of six years. Bone cancer does that sometimes.
• Native Americans did in fact stuff yarrow plant in their nostrils. Please don't email me and ask me if I've tried it.
• I never had a teacher like Fag Feet in high school, but if I was a teacher I'd definitely wear earth shoes and corduroy on a hot day, just to see your face when I did.
• I passed my driver's test on the first try. I took my driver's test in a wood-paneled station wagon the size of a u-haul truck. Go ahead. You try and parallel park it.
• I think art galleries are cool. I think Wal-marts are stupid.
• Skin Deep was the first book I completed. I'm working on two more.
• There's nothing wrong with cheerleaders. Ashley With Bad Hair just happened to be one. But there's nothing wrong with them.
• My favorite character to write was Dennis.
• Never lick a hot lightbulb.