Jane H Rohde

I've been telling stories with happy endings most of my life. Pre-kindergarten (we did not have a TV back then) my grandmother read Madge Bigham's lovely tale, Sonny Elephant, to me over and over. I loved the story, still do, but I didn't like the ending. (Three-year-olds are perverse creatures.) My grandmother told me we could tell the story any way we liked, so each time she read the book, she would stop at the last chapter, and I would make up an ending I liked better. That was the start of my literary career. But hardly the end.
When I was in the third grade, we had a spelling test every Friday. While our teacher, Mrs. Robinson, graded the papers, she would let students volunteer to entertain the class by telling a story or a joke or singing. I always had a story to tell, and the other kids seemed to like them.
My path has included a degree in mathematics and English. I stopped just short of a master's in computer science to have my daughter. I have worked as a programmer, a technical writer, a forensic accountant, a seamstress (which paid for my horse's board while I was in college), an office manager, a horse trainer, riding instructor, and stable owner, and now I have become an author--possibly my greatest adventure yet.
Nowadays, I live with my husband in Fernandina Beach, Florida, where I get to watch the waves and feel the sand with my feet every day.