We live our lives in chapters, Joseph Campbell used to say, and not until later decades do we see the curving arc, how all that seemed random and disjointed slowly comes together to support a premise or a common theme. For a long, long time, we don't know who holds or turns the kaleidoscope.

I've been a "professional" writer since 1985, by virtue of having sold my first of ten Harlequin romances in that year. Five of those were romantic suspense because I love a good mystery as much as a good love story. In subsequent years, while attempting to write a godawfully serious and tragic historical nonentity, I sold short fiction to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and Fantasy and Science Fiction. To keep food on the table, I became a corporate communication consultant and ended up quite enjoying that too. My first nonfiction book, The Corporate Storyteller: A Writing Manual & Style Guide for the Brave New Business Leader, was published in 2009.

A friend in Tokyo told me a great story about a woman reading my book in a stall in the ladies' rest room and laughing her head off. She emerged to find Japanese women staring at her, horrified. The world learns better with humour, I believe.