Both of my parents were doctors and most people expected me to follow in their medical footsteps … but the blood and guts that were discussed at the dinner table every night turned me right off medicine.
 
I went to a private school in Toronto that was very much like the one Lee and Jack went to in Muskoka, with two major exceptions: there weren’t any boys at my school and there weren’t any murders, either. After high school I went to Ryerson University and graduated with a degree in Radio and Television Arts.
 
I’ve had a lot of odd jobs over the years … newspaper delivery girl (delivering the papers by boat), salesclerk in a wool shop, marketing assistant in the head office of an international shoe company, producer of Canadian television movies (that was the oddest job of them all!) … but what I always secretly wanted to do was write mysteries. I guess that’s not much of a secret anymore. And, given the gruesome way I’ve killed a few fictional people in my Lee Smith Mysteries, it looks like I ended up mucking about in blood and guts after all.