Everything you Wanted to Know About
Nancy Rue
Just in case you have to write a book report, or you want to see what we have in common!
*I was born in Riverside, NJ, (is right across the river from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) in 1951. (you can do the math!)
*I'm the youngest of three kids (obviously we aren't kids any more!)
* I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, where we moved when I was four. Florida was still pretty wild and swampy. One day the animal control people went into the woods behind our house and came out with some baby alligators and a mama alligator that was, like, seven feet long!
* So -- uh -- I wasn't much of an outdoorsy kid. I liked to read, and read, and READ. My favorite books were mysteries--Trixie Beldon, Cherry Ames, and the Bobbsey Twins. My absolute favorite, though, was Nancy Drew. She was beautiful, she was wealthy and she was way smart. She could do everything from speak seven languages to scuba dive. She drove around in a little blue roadster with her two best friends solving crimes her lawyer father was too lame to figure out. She didn't have to go to school or work, and everyone loved her. I wanted to BE her.
*It was only a matter of time before, at age ten, I dragged my sister's typewriter out and started writing my very own mystery novel. It wasn't that good, really, so I quit after a couple of chapters. Young writers do that a lot.
*But the seed was planted. I still made up stories in my head, like when we drove every summer from Florida to visit the folks back in New Jersey, and I daydreamed that I had to grow up in a tobacco field with a family of possums. Or something.
*I graduated from high school in 1969 and went to college at Stetson University in DeLand, FL. My degree was in English (still reading other people's stuff) and in teaching.
*My sister introduced me to this guy who was in Navy training with her husband. His name was Jimmy Rue. He and I fell in love right before my senior year of college and got married two days after I graduated. Who says sisters don't have their good points?
*We moved to Norfolk, VA, in 1973, where I taught high school English at an inner-city school with a mostly African-American student body. When I got into my first class and the assignment in the grammar book was "Write a paragraph about the exports of Peru," I looked out at the sea of I-dare-you-to-teach-me-something faces staring out from under enormous afros and thought, that's so not happening. So we all wrote a paragraph about the uses of the afro comb. It was a huge success. That first year of creating with my students really got me back into writing.
*I went to the College of William and Mary and got a Masters degree in Education so I could be a better teacher. Mostly, though, the KIDS were teaching me to be a better teacher!
*We moved across the county to Nevada in 1978, and I had a kid of my own! Her name is Marijean, and she is now 28 years old and married (And she writes, too).
* I decided it was time to get serious about writing. I sent a bunch of stories out to grown-up magazines and got a bunch of rejection slips. Then I sent a story to a Methodist magazine for teenagers. They snapped me right up. It seems like a no-brainer now--I'm a Christian, I love kids, I should write Christian stuff for kids! Du-uh!
*I got another degree, in theatre, and my husband and I formed Nevada Children's Theatre, which was in operation for five years.; We took live productions out to parts of the desert where kids had never seen a play before.
*After I'd written about a hundred short stories (seriously), I started to write actual books. It took years of teaching and writing at the same time before I could start writing books full-time--Marijean was in high school when I finally quit teaching for good.
*By 1996 I was a full-time writer. The Christian Heritage Series made that possible. I was writing those books from the early 1990's until 2000.
* And then a new opportunity came along--the Lily series. If I ever doubted I was going to make it as a writer, man, that little red-head put those fears to rest! And, of course, Sophie followed Lily, with some teen and grown-up books in between -- plus the non-fiction books designed just for you.
*My husband and I live in Tennessee now, overlooking a beautiful lake, lots of sycamore trees, and the rocky Tennessee hills. We have a bright yellow power boat named BANANA SPLIT which you can find us on no matter what the weather. Marijean and her husband live nearby with my three grand-dogs and three grand-cats (and two grand-snakes . . .)
*I have a wonderful life, and I thank God for it every day. Amen!