Karen was born and raised in a military family. She is the mother of one daughter, has a grandson and two great-grandchildren. In 1970 as a very young divorced woman and single mother, she realized that getting an education above a high school level was an absolute necessity. Using student loans and working part-time, she spent two years in college and graduated as a Medical Laboratory Tech. She worked for two years paying on her loans and practicing her craft, but she wanted to increase her knowledge. Therefore, she attended Arizona State University and received a degree in Microbiology. She worked in the medical laboratory field until her retirement.

In addition, Karen loves computers. In her spare time over the years she has taken computer science courses and learned to program in a number of computer languages. She also learned through studying and reading how to build a desktop computer from the chassis up and to this day still builds her own computers. She is an avid gamer and especially enjoys first person shooters like Doom, Call of Duty etc. She also believes that video games are healthy for all ages as long as the length of play time is reasonable.

She is a huge advocate for teaching children and adults to read. She believes that reading is the precursor to knowledge, and if you can’t read, how can you learn? She also believes that reading can be used as an escape from the stresses of the real world as long as we remember that life must still go on no matter how hard it is. To that end Karen has been writing children’s books as well as some non-fiction works. Karen loves to read and spends some time each day reading fiction and non-fiction works.

Cathy was raised in an orphanage in Luxembourg until she was fourteen years of age when she was adopted by an American military family and brought to the United States. When she arrived she spoke only French and German. She worked hard over the next several years to learn English and get a good education. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States and proudly entered the Army during the Vietnam War. After her military service ended, she became certified in Physical Therapy and worked for a number of years with people (young and old) who had lost limbs or were paralyzed etc. During that time she also studied and became proficient in Accounting. When the emotional toll became too much, she left Physical Therapy and began working in Accounting where she worked until her retirement.

After retiring she had time to reflect on her life and the emotional ups and downs she had not only experienced herself but those experienced by people she had come into contact with through the years. This led her to write poetry that shares these experiences in a way that touches everyone.

In her spare time she rescues and raises cats. She took in a cat during a storm and three hours later was blessed with three small kittens. She decided to keep the kittens as well and you can see Raven, one of three kittens, in the picture above. She loves Pop music and has quite a collection of vinyl records, cassette tapes and CD’s. In addition she played bass guitar in a band and did some professional singing when she was younger as well. She loves to be play Bejeweled on her computer and enjoys interacting on facebook.