Deborah Heal

I can now officially say I'm an author. My first book Time and Again comes out this fall from Tate Publishing. It's an historical young adult novel involving the wizardry of computers--only natural since these are two of my interests. It takes place in Miles Station, Illinois not far from where I grew up in Woodburn. Miles Station is no longer there, but I was fascinated to read about its heydey in the History of Macoupin County from the Bunker Hill Library. My book was nearly 20 years in the making! I started it in Creative Writing class at SIUE, and then revised it and enlarged it over the years. My other great interests are gardening, quilting, and reading, of which I've done a bunch in the years since I began the book. Now that I've been blessed with a publishing contract, I have renewed courage to write, so I dug out the sequel to Time and Again that I started but never finished about 10 years ago. It's called Honor at Stake. This time the young people investigate some old homes in Alton to uncover Who Really Done It in a murder mystery from 1871. It's fun doing the historical research and then observing how events from my life get interwoven to make a story.You never know what all is in your brain until you start writing.