When I was seven, I was bored. That happened a lot when I was a kid since I'm an only child! :) I whined to my dad, "I'm bored!" His response, with a magnanimous wave of a hand, "There's a bookcase. Go get a book." So, I grabbed the biggest, brightest book there (a college biology book) and began from the beginning. It took a long time, a looong time to finish that book. Never one to do anything by halves, I wanted to be an actress, a vet and an astronaut--simultaneously, of course--but decided to be a horse trainer instead. (Really? A horse trainer? Yes, what of it?) No, I'm not a horse whisperer. A horse doesn't care what you whisper at it. A horse wants apples, carrots and cookies. Especially cookies. Just like people. ;) I'm also not a cowgirl (cows scare me!) and I don't race my horses. Sigh . . . I've heard it all a million times! LOL Anyways, my mom was a reader, books tucked everywhere around my childhood home, and my dad was a writer, little half-finished stories under the coffee table and between the cushions. I've acquired both habits on a grander scale (remember, nothing by halves? LOL) and have boxes of books above your head filling up a whole room and my computer hard drive filled up with bits and bytes of half-finished stories. It's a disease, I kid you not!