User:Tinned Elk/Sandbox Linda Howard

I have lived in the same county in (Etowah) Alabama for my entire life. I wrote my first book when I was 9 years old - didn't know a thing about chapter breaks. It just started and it went until it ended. I wrote totally for my own enjoyment for twenty years. I worked at a trucking company, where I met my husband, and all of a sudden, it was like the difference between light and dark, I got up one morning and said to myself, "Okay, let's see if you're good enough." Until then I had never even thought about trying to get published. That was twenty years ago.

I have three grown step-children, three grandchildren, two golden retrievers lying beside me as we speak named Bit O'Honey and Sugar Baby, and we live in a big house that's very much a home and not a showplace. It's a house where the kids romp, the dogs romp, and you can sit on any piece of furniture.

I do laundry and I cook - there aren't any servants waiting on us. Just last year I got someone to help me with paperwork one afternoon a week.

2000 AAR interview

Fans often ask me what I do in my free time, what my hobbies are. The answer is simple: I don't have any free time. My husband is a professional bass tournament fisherman, so we travel a lot to some very unglamorous locations. We have packing down to a science. Unfortunately, we're on the road so much that when we're home, all the things that have been put off while we were gone have to be taken care of in clumps. You know the drill: dentist appointments, business meetings, family things. Both my husband and I come from large families, and almost everyone lives in the same county, so you can see where it gets complicated. There are five living generations in my husband's family (we've attended the funerals of so many aunts and uncles that my editor asked me in some bewilderment just how many we had left). The answer is: five on my side of the family, six on my husband's side.

I do read a lot. Reading is one of my greatest joys, and I read every genre except horror, which gives me nightmares. My imagination is active enough without outside help, thank you very much. But I read while I'm doing other things: waiting at traffic lights, cooking, sitting in waiting rooms, etc. An unbroken stretch where I can simply read is a luxury. A lot of what I read is for research, which I love. The best part of writing a book is doing the research. The things I've found out. ..

We raise some cattle, which require a lot of work, but that's my husband's job unless they all escape, which happens every so often. Then roundup is required, and I pitch in. Cows are not the smartest creatures, and they stink. Like I said, taking care of them is my husband's job. He's been kicked, knocked down, and butted, but for some reason he enjoys raising and selling them. Cattle, however, are not my thing. Did I mention they stink?

Half of my life can be summed up in one phrase: have laptop, will travel. The other half is wrapped up in family. Not a bad life at all.

--Linda Howard

compilation of info about LH

Linda S. Howington was born in Alabama and has lived there all of her life. She began to write at nine years old, and wrote for twenty years for her own enjoyment. She worked at a trucking company, where she met my husband, and then decided to try and get her work published in 1980. Her first work was published by Silhouette in 1982.

Her husband is a professional bass tournament fisherman, and she travels with him to some very unglamorous locations where she works on her laptop. Linda and her husband live in a big house on a farm in Alabama, where they raise cattle and have two dogs. Howard, Linda, Random House web site, retrieved February 15, 2007