Elise M. Stone

I love stories.

One of my earliest memories is of sitting next to my mother as she read Grimms Fairy Tales to me. I loved those stories so much, I asked her to teach me how to read so I could read them myself.

I wrote my first story in kindergarten. It was a series of pictures, and after school, my mother wrote the words under each one. I thought I was in heaven when I had to hand in a short story every Friday in sixth grade.

Later on, I didn’t write at all. I was happy in my job as a computer programmer.

Until 9/11.

After the initial shock, I was thinking about how all those people had gone to work or gotten on a plane, never imagining it would be their last day alive. What might they regret if they had?

More importantly, what would I regret not doing if my life came to an end tomorrow? One of my answers was writing a novel. I vowed to do that now.

Twenty years later, I’ve written a lot more than one novel. Now that I’m retired from the day job, I’m finally doing what I wanted to do all along: write mysteries in sunny Arizona while my two cats nap nearby.