Eileen Moore

I fell in love with reading as a child. My parents placed me in a boarding school while they worked in the eastern jungles of Ecuador. On the first floor of the dormitory was a small room lined with bookshelves reaching up to a twelve- foot high ceiling. I would climb the shelves, select a book and then return to ground-level and settle in to read. Fortunately, the shelves never peeled away from the wall and I returned each week to seek new adventures in the pages of the books I discovered.

By age 12, I was no longer content to just read others work, I knew that I wanted to write books. I loved how the faces of people became so intent as I shared a story. Entering college, six years later, I chose to major in journalism as I saw the discipline required in the writing process. Tell me the who, what, when and where in beginning a story.

After settling in Arizona as an adult, I wanted to introduce my children to the outdoors. Where to begin? There were few guide books to the trails if they existed. This desire became the fertile soil for writing a book on the trails of Arizona. The process was agonizing and then I discovered that the local publishing company was not interested in what I had written. Within a few months I decided to self-publish after watching another couple achieve success with their first book. Even before the book was officially launched, I was planning a second book on the fire towers of Arizona. My friends joke that I never seem to run out of projects.

Reading opens up new worlds to us, whether a biography, a technical manual explaining some new process or a work of fiction based in another land. I hope to share my own discoveries with those who slip into the pages of the books I've written, whether we're thinking about Arizona and the southwest or considering what it means to walk by faith.