I grew up with spectacles on my nose and that nose always in a book. It didn’t surprise anybody that words and books and stories turned out to be my vocation, my entertainment, my sport, and my hobby.

My work—if you can ever call reading work—includes thousands of hours as the unseen voice you’ve heard in commercials and educational films; more thousands editing educational and promotional articles and books; and lots and lots of lovely research.

For play, I devour historical potboilers, vintage spy and mystery stories, classics, women’s lit, and retellings.   

I’m addicted to cryptic crosswords, because every clue is a puzzle within the puzzle.   

I also do a selected few things that aren’t reading. I love traveling to places where history’s veins run close to the surface. I bake 80 dozen cookies during the winter holidays. I sing whenever and wherever I’m allowed; and I’m loud.  

I share a cozy, messy 100-year-old southern bungalow with playwright and legal expert David Ball, plus a 40-year-old indoor ficus tree that’s bigger than both of us and nearly 700 owl sculptures and figurines.

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TL;DR   Hufflepuff.