My love of mysteries and ghost stories can be traced back to my childhood growing up in the small city of Waterloo, Iowa. One spring morning when I was seven years old, my mom declared I was ready to read "big books" all by myself. She ushered me into our attic, pointed at three boxes of novels from her childhood, and told me to pick whichever one I wanted. Thrilled, I immediately zeroed in on the Nancy Drew mysteries. I chose The Haunted Bridge...and barely stopped reading for the next five years. In fact, I wrote half of my own book called Mystery at Meadow Winds when I was eleven. 

Storytelling of all kinds has always interested me. As a kid, and later as a teenager in Columbus, Ohio, I took voice lessons and performed in plays and musicals. I studied theater at Northwestern University before I switched majors to radio/television/film. After graduation, I acted in small Chicago storefront theaters, improvised with comedy troupes, and freelanced in public relations (back then my name was Wendy Langlas). I got married, had two kids, and adored reading books aloud to them. Once my children were in middle school, I decided to concentrate on my childhood love of mysteries and scary stories—and write stories for kids. Today I live in Illinois with my family in an old house built more than a hundred years ago. I haven't actually SEEN a ghost...but I'm still looking.