Verla Kay is a native Californian who grew up in the sleepy little town of Watsonville. Located right next to the surfing town of Santa Cruz, it nestles between San Francisco and Monterey Bays and enjoys some of the most beautiful scenery and weather in the world.

With a crop duster father and a stay-at-home domestic mother, one older sister and one younger brother, Verla's early life seemed ideal - and in many ways it was. But Verla had a hard time making friends and spent most of her younger years as a very lonely child. She spent many hours reading books and daydreaming about friends and love and the happiness that she prayed would someday be hers.

That happiness came to her when she met her future husband, Terry. It was love at first sight for both of them and after a rocky courtship, they were married on Easter Sunday the spring following their graduation from high school.

For the first fifteen years, their marriage was anything but ideal, but through sheer stubborness and determination, they made a success of it and their marriage survived despite many loud arguments and frequent broken pottery. During this time, they had four children - three boys and one girl.

Verla worked off and on, to help make ends meet. But her primary goal was to stay at home and take care of her children, so most of the time the jobs she took were temporary ones and some of them were quite interesting.

She tried picking chives in the fields, but that job only lasted two weeks. The decision to stay at home and care for her children herself, was made very quickly after she discovered that her first paycheck was less than what she owed to her babysitter!

One of the most fun and profitable jobs Verla ever had was when she worked for a party plan selling toys and gifts at home parties. This was a job that she could do while staying at home with her children and she earned hundreds of free toys and gifts for her family and seven free trips to exotic places around the world on her group sales as a District Manager with this company.

As a result, she and her husband, Terry, have been to Bogota, Columbia and Rio de Janerio, Brazil in South America. Verla went alone to Israel and both of them toured Portugal in Europe. They enjoyed Hawaii and a cruise to Alaska together. The last trip she earned was to Greece and due to a severe case of bronchitis, she could not go, so she sent Terry without her. He says that cruising the Greek Isles with 600 women while his wife was at home was a wonderful experience - and Verla tends to believe him!

 * Becoming A Writer *

It wasn't until Terry and Verla had moved their family to Nevada and purchased a laundromat in Carson City, that she found herself thinking about becoming a writer. One of their regular customers was a woman who was a successful free lance writer for magazines. She looked at some of Verla's writing and was constantly encouraging Verla to become a writer herself. The seed had been sown. They lived in Carson City for three years, then the call of the ocean breezes and tall redwoods became too strong and they moved back to Santa Cruz.

For the next few years, Verla ran a licensed daycare from her home. Snaps 'N Snails Daycare catered to six children at a time - most of the children being between five months and three years old. While she read books to the children, Verla couldn't stop thinking about writing stories of her own. Finally, the call to WRITE became too strong and she signed up for a correspondence course through the Institute of Children's Literature. During the next two years, she studied and practiced and learned what it took to write and sell stories for children. Now Verla is an instructor for the Institute -- helping other new writers to learn what she has learned.

 * SUCCESS! *

After selling two short stories, one to Turtle Magazine and one to Humpty Dumpty's Magazine, one of her picture book manuscripts was pulled from the slush pile at Putnam Books and she was on her way to being a REAL author. Six months later, Putnam bought a second manuscript.

It was while Verla was working as a desk clerk in a local motel that she found herself checking in a very special couple one night. While chatting with the people, some things she said about her writing triggered events that eventually led to her gaining a terrific agent in New York who was able to negotiate much better terms for Verla on her third picture book contract.