Jan was born and raised in upstate New York. She has lived in Hawaii, Louisiana, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Nevada. She has a degree in English and has spent four decades working as a nurse, retiring in March of this year. As a widow of three years she lives in southwest Missouri, on a rocky ridge, where she stays busy with her church, her flowers, her writing, and her two dogs and two cats. She also is hostess to a number of wild creatures, both great and small, winged, scaled and feathered. It is her desire that Mark's Remarkable Summer will bless you as it has her in the writing of it.