Rebecca Drake
I was born in New York City and moved to Indiana, Ohio, back to Indiana, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I was the always the new kid, attending nine schools in 12 years including four different high schools.
Wherever we moved, one thing was a constant—we always lived near a library and a bookstore. Books were the friends that never said goodbye and great companions on long, dusty U-Haul trips from one place to the next. Each new apartment or house became home once the books were unpacked.
I was a petty thief as a child, a skilled liar, a card cheat and a Girl Scout. I was also a bookworm (some things never change) and always wrote “reading” first on any list that asked what I did for pleasure.
I love books so much that I worked as a library aide for three years in high school and narrowly escaped being fired because I spent so much time reading the books I was supposed to be shelving!
I started writing in my early teens and knew at 15 that I wanted to be a novelist, though it took me years to realize that dream.
After high school, I attended two small colleges before graduating from Penn State with a degree in Journalism. I married and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but the wanderlust has remained. I’ve traveled to countries I read about as a child–the Cook Islands, Egypt, China, and Turkey among others. I’ve also had the good fortune to live for a time in Qatar, a country I came to regard as a second home.
Like many authors, I’ve had an assortment of jobs that paid the rent: Reporter, technical writer, freelance copywriter, and editor among others. In addition to parenting two delightful children, my resume has recently included becoming an adjunct instructor for Seton Hill University’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction.
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As a teenager, staying up late devouring the latest Stephen King novel, I used to wonder what it was like to be married to him—did his wife sleep uneasily, one hand poised to dial 911? It occurred to me recently that this is what my husband and many authors’ spouses might be doing.
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I’ve always been intrigued by the dark side, by the potential for evil that lurks in all of us, by what triggers seemingly average people to commit brutal and heinous acts against other human beings. However, I’m equally fascinated by the capacity for goodness and kindness that also dwells within us, amazed and inspired by the stories of ordinary people who confront cruelty with courage or choose compassion over vengeance.
For me, it always comes back to the matter of choice. In all my writing I’m interested in exploring those turning points in our lives that make us the people we are and sometimes, for better or worse, the people we never thought we’d be.
About the Author