I came into this troubled world during the early morning hours of June 17, 1950, in the city of Budapest, Hungary. I was the first and last child of my forty-one-year-old mother, and my father was forty-five years old at the time of my birth. As I did not know any better, I could not possibly understand that we were living in poverty as I was growing up with loving parents, and there was always a bite to eat. My childhood was poor and saddened with tragedies. As a six-year-old child, I witnessed the bloody 1956 revolution and received the first taste of true prejudice by those of whom I thought liked us yet turned against my family. That tragedy did not match the untimely death of my beloved father when I was not yet seven years old on February 14, 1957. My mother remarried in 1959, and our financial situation was upgraded from poverty to poor. After finishing elementary school, I made a decision to earn money as soon as possible to ease our financial situation, and I enrolled in a two-year business college (high school diploma was not required). I began working as a sixteen-year-old certified secretary/bookkeeper. During the same period, I began my high school education, which I completed while working full-time and attending night school. I discovered my love for writing when I was eleven years old after a movie that my childhood friend and I saw in the movie theater. We were not pleased with the ending, and Steven suggested that I should write a different ending that we both liked. Voila! A writer was born. With my family's encouragement, I entered a writing contest given by a youth-oriented magazine, and to my genuine surprise, I won second prize. My desire to live in a free country and to improve my life was so great that in 1972, leaving everything (including my aging parents) behind, I managed to escape from Hungary during a tour to Austria (then), Yugoslavia, and Italy. I spent almost ten long months in a rat-infested refugee camp located Capua, Italy, while I waited for official permission to immigrate to the country of my dreams, the USA. In 1975, I met and married a wonderful man, my husband, Guy. Thanks to his everlasting patience, he assisted me in my task of learning the English language. He is truly my partner for life, and I remain forever grateful to him for standing by me in some tough times. It is difficult for me to describe my love for writing. I cannot think of a bigger emotional joy for an author than to see a published novel in somebody's hand and to see a story come alive on the screen. I yearn to experience that joy.
