A funny thing happened to me on my way to get a real life. I became a novelist.
     My first novel, Death Game, was written while I was in chemotherapy for breast cancer. (One of those real life experiences I would rather have avoided.) Death Game was published in January, 2007 and is doing rather well, which has led to requests for me to explain who I am.  And how I ended up writing…thrillers.
     Like virtually every author I know, my favorite activities as a child were writing and reading. I published my first short story at age thirteen in Arizona Highways magazine. I remember feeling rather proud, but mostly I remember my father telling me writing stories was a form of lying.
     I enrolled in journalism at Arizona State University planning to make my living telling stories.  That didn’t work out because the journalism department lost its accreditation after the students and professors quit to start an underground newspaper. (This was during the Vietnam years.)
     I detoured into biology and got a BS in Biological Sciences, graduating magna cum laude mostly because I had no social life. At the same time I took a B.A.E. in education, which I put to work immediately to pay off some bills. Teaching doesn’t begin to pay the bills, as all teachers know, so I worked a second job. I started a business doing ghost-writing for various subscription newsletters at night.
     My most interesting client was an alcoholic professor at UCLA. He wrote stock-picking advice on a yellow legal tablet and mailed it to me each month. I learned how to do research when he went on month-long drinking binge. Having never invested a dime, I picked all the stocks that month and provided reasons they were wise investments. I learned one of the most important lessons of my life when not a single newsletter reader cancelled their subscription. So far as I know, no one even noticed.
     I self-published my first book at age 24, with the help of a company in Phoenix called Semantodontics.  Over the next ten years, I leveraged myself into becoming a speaker and author in medical marketing and technology. By 1995, I had published three books, over a hundred articles and was a clinical editor of a magazine called Dentistry Today. I also owned my own research corporation on imaging technology. Frankly, that career paid very well.  I enjoyed traveling and being the center of attention. But I hated having to wear pantyhose.
     And then came the day I gave notice to everyone I was quitting. It took six months to disentangle myself. Then I went home, sat down and started writing the novel that had been teasing at my brain for decades.
     If it wasn’t for a little girl in Guatemala, I doubt I ever would have had the courage to quit.   My husband and I are the type of people who want to make a difference in the world—even if it is only a small one. Several years after we married we began the process of a third-world adoption.  While working through the paperwork, I realized I didn’t want to always be on a plane heading off somewhere. When you have a child, that’s not how you make a difference.
     A few months before we were scheduled to bring our daughter home from Guatemala, I ended up traveling to Planet Cancer, a place no one on earth wants to go. Cancer treatment required four surgeries and chemotherapy and took a year at Stanford Medical Center. During that year our adoption was cancelled by the highest court in Guatemala.
     My breast cancer sisters encouraged me to write the tension, fear and pain I was experiencing as into my novel—as a catharsis. I thought it was a good idea, so I turned my novel into a thriller.  What I hear most often from readers about Death Game is that it feels like you live the story instead of reading it.  Maybe that’s because I did live it—not the story, but the feelings.
     A few weeks after chemotherapy was over we got a call that the adoption was back on track.  (A long story I will write about—someday.) We flew to Guatemala the next day. Everyone noticed I was bald, but no one cared. Particularly not a little girl with the eyes of an old soul.
     Don’t let anyone fool you. Being a writer is the best gig around. These days the three of us live in a pole house on the North Shore of Kauai.  My husband quit his executive career to do websites, learn how to surf and figure out what comes next.
     I already know what comes next. More writing. More stories. But mostly, more days at home with my family—enjoying each moment.
     Cheryl Swanson is  currently working on the sequel to Death Game.

SWANSON, Cheryl. American. Born in Phoenix, Arizona. Educated at Arizona State University, BAE. B.S. Biological Sciences. Author:  In Search of Patients, The High Tech Practice, (PennWell Publishing) Newsletters, Patients and You (Semantodontics) Owner of IntelliSys, Inc. until 2002. Author, Death Game, January, 2007 Zumaya Publications