My life: The first time I flew in a small plane (Cessna 150), the pilot and copilot (my fiance & his buddy) got lost. Swooping low over water towers, they looked for one with a town's name painted on it to find out where we were. I loved flying, but this worried me a bit.

My life: encountering passionflower, OMG. New to Florida, I walked across waste ground, nothing but sand and wiregrass, when suddenly I saw crawling at my feet a great, shouting, barbaric flower the width of my hand, a brash manifestation pointing its fingers at me. Whoa. Wow.

My life: The old feral cat came to say goodbye when it was her time to die. I sat and held her and hummed to her for half an hour or so. She pressed the top of her head against my neck the whole time. When she decided to go, she walked into the woods, and I never saw her again.

My life: at an sff con, I saw an older woman sitting by herself, so I went over and sat with her. We had a delightful talk about angels – she was a firm believer in the existence of angels, told several stories about angelic intervention. Turned out she was Madeleine L’Engle.

My life: At a convenience store, gun-wielding robbers burst in. Knowing my husband, I thought I'd better alert him. Found him pawing a shelf, utterly oblivious. Told him don't buy anything, store was being robbed. He yelled at me as if I were stupid, “Well, go hide in the back!”

My life: One summer night I saw giant slugs, six-inchers, mating while hanging from a string of slime. Suspended from a tree branch, right in the middle of my back-yard air, they twirled, a corpulent, writhing double helix, a wetly shining three-dimensional yin-yang, freaky cool.

My life: Visiting my first literary agent, I discovered that she lived in the flood plain of a major river and she conducted business entirely from her bed. She was a good agent, but I envisioned her and my manuscripts floating downriver on her bed like Huck Finn on his raft.

My life: in a car, 6 a.m, before cell phones. Driver remarked, "There's a house on fire." Yes, fully ablaze, nobody responding! I was stunned and appalled the driver zoomed past. My every nerve screamed to stop, pound on doors, alert the world, acknowledge, weep for the dead.

My life: When I was a kid, every day at breakfast my dad would ask, “Nancy, didja hear the big trrruck in the middle o’ the night? I was mystified, and tried to stay awake to see the big truck, for years, until finally my mother snapped. My dad was teasing her about her snoring!

My life: I spent a year living in a hangar at a lonesome general aviation airport populated by frogs, snakes, silk moths. An eight-foot alligator came into the hangar to help celebrate my 59th birthday. Actually, there was steak on the grill, and it wanted some. Memorable bday.

My life: Middle age, I took a life drawing class, meaning nude models. It was a revelation to see the human figure as lines and planes, light and shadow. The male model, however, wore a rubber band around his testicles, which struck me as a bit weird. Is that, like, the usual?

My life: When I was little, an old woman babysat me overnight. When a ululation came a from a backyard tree, she quavered from her bedroom, “Nancy, what was that?” I reassured her, “Just a screech owl.” She whimpered, “I thought it was a ghost.” I was the child calming my elder.

My life: I volunteered at a no-kill animal rescue with about 150 dogs. One day, mysteriously, they all, big mutts and small, all began to howl at once, their voices swelling into a feral chorus that made Bach’s Toccata and Fugue sound meek. Much as I love dogs, I felt a chill.

My life: This big cat would not yield to the car! I ran over him, spent a panicky hour searching for him, found him hiding and rushed him to the vet, only to discover that there was absolutely nothing wrong with him! He meowed at the vet and licked her face. He was one hefty cat.

My life: Tacking his horse for me, a novice, to ride, my brother liberally applied fly spray. Then, halfway across the field, the saddle rotated 180 degrees and dumped me on the ground. Saddle hanging beneath it, the horse smirked. The fly spray had made it slick as paraffin. 🐴

My life: When I was 15, my parents left me to run our motel for a weekend. Little place, 11 units. I was a toothpick of a kid, 85 pounds. I rented rooms, took $, fetched towels, fielded questions, locked up. I thought nothing of it and nobody gave me the least bit of a problem.

My life: At a Maurice Sendak book signing, I gave him a copy of The White Hart. The hostess hissed, “This is our LOCAL authoressss.” Sendak said, “But this is from Pocket Books in New York! This is internationally distributed!” And he thanked me. I am eternally grateful to him.

My life: for decades I wrote novels for teens, about teens, advocating teens. Then -- call it karma? -- a teenage girl read some of those novels and spearheaded making #EnolaHolmes into a movie that changed my life. No longer must I struggle to pay the mortgage. Thank you, MBB.

Just found out that my #EnolaHolmes novels were removed from some public school libraries in Florida in response to HB 1069, which is touted as saving children from the sexual exigencies of adulthood. Odd, because Enola is naively Victorian in her ignorance of such matters. Egad.

I see a lot of toads hanging out with my cats. Finding this odd, I mentioned it to a friend, who said toads eat cat food. As one who has seen cat food gobbled by possums, raccoons, foxes and the like, I complained, “What DOESN'T eat cat food?” She replied gleefully, “Cats!” 🐈🐈‍⬛