I was raised in Smithers, British Columbia, Canada, and lived there until I moved to Toronto at age 20. I had a brief and unsuccessful career as a fashion design student and, after I worked at a series of low-paying jobs, such as server, record store employee, etc., I began a degree in English Literature at University of Toronto, which I finished at the University of British Columbia. After graduating, I became an editor at a self-help/how-to book publishing company based in Vancouver.

When I was a kid, I wrote fiction but gave it up for a life of crime (no, not really) until I was about 26, when I started writing in the morning before work—first on the bus, then in a coffee shop. This writing became the book Alice, I Think, which was first published by a small Canadian press called Thistledown in 2000.

I set out to write a comedy that would make my 30-year-old best friend and my 50-year-old godfather laugh. It was only when it came time to get published that I was told that I'd written a teen novel. I am inspired by writers like Sue Townsend and J. D. Salinger, as well as Gerald Durrell, Stella Gibbons, John Kennedy Toole, and David Sedaris.

When I first started writing, my intention was to write a book about a teenager who doesn't fit in, but doesn't allow that fact to crush her. The Alice MacLeod series is my homage to oddballs. I wanted to create a character who has the courage and integrity to find her own way and define herself independently of other people. I've always admired people who can do that.

Lately, I've decided that my goal is to write every kind of book I love to read. After comedies, my next-favorite type of book was the horse book. I was a lunatic for horses when I was younger. I owned several horses (for a time when I was quite young I was convinced I was a horse, but let's keep that between us) and I became obsessed with an equestrian sport called dressage. I quit riding when I left home for college, but part of me always thought I could have been a "contender." (In retrospect, I'm not sure why I would have thought that.) Anyway, I got a nice payday when Alice, I Think was made into a TV series, and the first thing I did was rush out a buy a horse and start working on a book about two young dressage riders. The story was initially about two girls, but soon I fell in love with a secondary character, a boy named Alex, and the book became mainly about him. That is my fourth book, Another Kind of Cowboy.

My other love is detective stories. Hence, my fifth novel: Getting the Girl, which was shortlisted for best YA mystery by the Mystery Writers of America and by Canada's Association of Crime Writers, thereby increasing my self-esteem by a third.

In the spring of 2010, I have a memoir about my misguided youth coming out (Nice Recovery) and in spring 2011, my first novel for adults (Republic of Dirt) will be released.

To sum up this rather long-winded biography, I always tell people that if one person who's feeling isolated or left out reads my book and laughs and thinks "I'm not alone" or "at least I'm not that bad," then I've achieved my goal. And if one adult reads it and laughs and thinks, "thank god those days are over," it's been a success.

I live in Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island, with my husband and our dog. I am a lousy but persistent gardener and I maintain a small shrine to Raymond Chandler in my office.