I grew up thirty miles down the highway in San Marcos, and I've still got family there, so I guess I'm pretty well rooted.

I got hooked on TV westerns back in the early sixties when I was about five, mostly because my brother was addicted to them and wouldn't let me watch anything else.

In middle school I wrote a paper on Hemingway and none of the sentences had more than five words.

When I was six I wanted to be a ballerina. By the time I was eight I was fairly sure this plan wasn't panning out. I began aspiring to be an "Aquamaid" at a resort called "Aquarena Springs" in my hometown of San Marcos: Aquamaids got to wear mermaid tails and feed milk bottles underwater to Ralph the Swimming Pig for an audience submerged in a "submarine".

I grew up thirty miles down the highway in San Marcos, and I've still got family there, so I guess I'm pretty well rooted.

I changed my hopes to being a singer [when I was a child] and sat around with my hair in my face droning Mac Davis songs. Writing was sort of a last stand. Come to think of it, it was the only "talent" I had that anyone asked for more of.

[My brother] was older, and since the law of the west was fairly entrenched in our household, whoever was bigger got control of the television. I sat mesmerized, and horrified, through hundreds of gunfights and became emotionally involved with everyone in Bonanza and Gunsmoke.