I wrote my first short story at seven, and have written ever since. I spent twenty years teaching, but writing was always a part of my private life. My students could write circles around me (I had dazzling students) so I didn't even try to write fiction. I had a husband and children who were beautiful writers, so that inhibited me. I filled notebooks that no one ever saw when I was unhappy or searching and threw them away, never rereading them. Pencil and paper and I have been close comrades all my life.

Finally in 1985 the time had come. I just sat down at my computer and started to write a novel, knowing nothing at all about how to do that. I had, of course, taught literature the majority of my life, but I had to discard most of what I knew in order to meet the desires of today's reading public. I went to the library and studied everything I could about how to write to get published, and off I went. I never actually believed I'd get published. Never once did I really dream I would. I was working full time as the executive secretary of the county medical society, so my writing time was limited to writing 25 pages each weekend (which is what I average now in a whole week when nothing else distracts me from writing). I met a writer who told me I had talent (the most beautiful words I'd ever heard) and recommended me to his agent. I sent off a 40 page outline and the first 8 chapters of my novel, EAST OF THE SUN, and the agent sold it to the first publisher she tried.

When I have been interviewed on TV and radio or given talks to book groups I tell the audience they're not listening to Barbara Bickmore but to Cinderella. The last eleven years of my life have been like a magical fairytale. For the last seven years I have lived in a little Indian town on the shores of a lake in sunny Mexico. My books have been translated into 16 languages and published in 22 countries. In the majority of European countries my books are THE major selection of the Book of the Month Clubs there. I have had the opportunity to travel widely, having visited Australia three times, India twice, spent 7 weeks in China, been to Thailand, and to Hawaii. All since I've become a writer (in fact, I started my first book about Africa when in China!).

Being a writer is the most difficult work I've ever done, because there is absolutely nothing and no one but me and my mind. It's scary, in fact petrifying because I'm always afraid maybe there's nothing there, no thoughts or words to put on a page. Yet the joy, and sometimes ecstasy, is that something comes, a book is created, and I get these marvelous feelings of pride and even astonishment that I wrote what I wrote. And that somebodies pay to read it all. And that all my books are on library shelves! It's still a dream come true to me.

--Barbara Bickmore