I started telling stories at age three, or so my sister Carol tells me. Sitting on the kitchen table, surrounded by family, I told of lions and bears that lived in the woods on my great-grandfather's farm and the green scary swamp that could swallow a whole animal. Maybe that's what started me on the storytelling road.

My father believed in lessons. When I was four and my sister six, we took tap dancing lessons from MacPhail School of Music and danced in our bird costumes on the stage of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Later, I took ballet, acrobat, piano, accordion, baton, and 6 years of dramatic art lessons. For my private recital, at age 13, I gave a one-act play at the Minneapolis College of Music. Those lessons were great because they helped me memorize work for school.

Growing up, my favorite book to read was Grimm's Fairy Tales. Its cover is worn and the pages slightly dog-eared, but I still have it on my library shelf.