READ BONNIE TOEWS Author of Dramatic Suspense

Books have been my best friends since I first learned to read. My grandmother could never understand why I was so sleepy in the morning, but unknown to her, at night, when I was supposed to be asleep, I tented my sheets over my head and read by flashlight. Many a time I couldn't put the book down and fell asleep over the open pages. I think my mother was my co-conspirator because in the morning I would awake with the book on my night table--a neat bookmark in place--and my flashlight tucked into the top drawer.

I wrote my first novel at age 10, about an army flight nurse, similar to my favorite Cherry Ames series, but this story was set in Korea rather than in World War II. Once again, Canada was part of a world action--this time with the United Nations fighting to protect South Korea from its northern aggressors and Red Chinese invaders. I was too young to join the Air Force and I was too short to be a pilot. If I couldn't fly the wounded out, then I wanted to be a flight nurse when I grew up. I'm the same height now as I was when I was ten, but in later years, I did learn to pilot an old bush plane, a Fleet 80 Canuck. Instead of going into medicine--I was a dunderhead at math, I became a teacher in English and Music. I thought the ideal of teaching kids to march to their own drum was enough, but the lure of printers' ink stole me away. By night, I wrote freelance articles. By day, I configured the classroom into a newsroom. Eventually, my hobby evolved into a career as a trade journalist, editor, publications manager, and then novelist.

Now much of my time is spent in my home office. At any given time, I wear different hats: from book designer, freelance writer, editor, to magazine production manager, but my favorite hours are spent researching background material for novels I want to write.