The question I’ve been asked more than anything is… How did you end up writing this book?
Truthfully I do not have a straight-forward answer. My family ended up in Del Rio, TX, more than once for my spouse’s military career. On our second occasion living here, I had the pleasure of teaching high school science with a retired park ranger. She inspired me to learn more about the flora and fauna of Del Rio, TX. Where everyone else saw ugly shrubs, she saw beauty. Her enthusiasm for nature was contagious–I realized at the young age of 40, I am a naturalist at heart!
When my class had just finished a unit on the hydrologic cycle (the water cycle), the idea for the story popped into my mind. We had been discussing the dangers of runoff pollution. Given the topography of South-Central Texas, it seems like anything could be swept from the ground into a sinkhole. But then what? I quite literally jotted my thoughts down onto a post-it note and let it sit by my stack of papers to grade for weeks. I continued to add frantic scribbles to the post-it turned scratch paper until I packed it up with my belongings at the end of the semester!
The following semester, I resigned from teaching at the local high school to fully support my spouse’s demanding military career and my two young children. That’s when I sat down to write. “Blindcat and Tadpole” first came to life on my computer in the fall of 2022…
