When I was “home” in South Carolina last month, I dug up my high school diary and some old clips — my first media hits! The one below is from the sadly now defunct Neighbors section of The State newspaper. Years later, as a college student at the University of South Carolina, I would work in the Customer Service department of that very same newspaper.
One small correction: I was actually Features Editor of The Buc’s Blade, my high school newspaper, not Editor-in-Chief.
Anyway, here’s what did and did not come true: I did attend Kalamazoo College for one year before transferring to USC. I did study abroad in Avignon, France, albeit for only one semester. Alas, I did not become editor of Vogue, and I have not yet written “some great American masterpiece,” but I have written books that students have read in English classes. Just yesterday I was so pleased to receive a message from a student at an international school in Japan who wrote that she would be dressing up as Aiko Cassidy, heroine of my novel Gadget Girl , for “Book Character Day” at school.
“I love your novels!” she wrote. “I really enjoyed reading this book. Please write more books like this!”
I have and I will!
Gaijin Mama 