Catherine McCallum
Monrovia, California, United States Email: cmccallum50@yahoo.com I started writing when I was nine years old, and I've never stopped. My high school English teacher submitted a short story of mine to a national contest when I was a junior, and I placed third or fourth - I've forgotten which, precisely, but I do remember that I won $10. It must have come in handy, to have stuck in my memory all these years.
In college I discovered that I hated having my work critiqued. I switched my major to computer science and spent the next two decades writing specs, code, and manuals.
By the time my third child was born, I'd been a working mom for seventeen years. I decided enough was enough, and I gave the engineering world the boot. Since then, I've written two novels and I'm working on three more. So far, I have only rejection letters for my efforts, but some of them have been quite nice.
I like to set my stories in the San Gabriel Mountains, which tower over my town of Monrovia. They are strange little mountains - not very high, but so rough and craggy that large areas of them are uninhabitable. They form the northern boundary of the San Gabriel Valley of Los Angeles County, one of the most heavily-populated areas in the country; and there they stand, pretty much empty, daring us to populate them! Of course, I have to try. I've placed everything there from the survivors of a civilization-ending natural disaster to a secret community of telepaths, to a girl whose adoptive mother is a fire-breathing dragon.
Interests: I read a lot, especially mysteries, science fiction, and children's literature; and when I'm not reading, I hike in the San Gabriel Mountains, tutor students from our local school district in math, and, of course, write.
Published writer: No
Freelance: No |
