One of my earliest memories goes back to kindergarten days. I actually went to kindergarten twice, because my mother worked and there was no day care in those days for children of working mothers.
We lived on North Lincoln Avenue in Chicago, and my mother sent me to school with my sister. She was in kindergarten and I was 4 years old, and they let me sit in the class with her. At one point they wanted to make me leave the class, and I went down to the principal`s office and cried and begged him to let me stay in school, and he did.
Then we moved to another neighborhood, and I had to re-do kindergarten because they wouldn`t believe at the new school that I`d already been through it.
The whole time that I was repeating kindergarten I kept saying, ”When am I going to read? I want to learn to read.” And, of course, they told me I`d learn in 1st grade.
Then, after the first day of school in 1st grade, I came home and I was crying my eyes out. My mother asked me what was wrong, and I said, ”They told me I`d learn how to read in 1st grade, and I don`t know how to read yet.”
But I did learn very fast. I always had an interest in books and words, but I never had any interest in writing. I don`t remember my parents reading much to us. But I do remember one book they read to us, and that was
”Heidi.”
My last two years of high school I went to Jones Commercial High School,
(a two-year business-oriented school, now known as Jones Metropolitan High School). In those days, in the early `50s, the idea of a woman studying for a career, even as a secretary, was very avant garde.
My first job was in the office of Mayor (Martin) Kennelly of Chicago. I`ll never forget him-a pink-scalped, white-haired old man. I worked there about six weeks, and then I got married and I got fired. In those days you could get fired for getting married.
My husband (Ray Auel) was in the Air Force, and I joined him in Roswell, N.M., where he was stationed. We lived down there for two years, and I had my first baby down there, and then he was discharged in 1956.
Even though we missed Chicago terribly for the first year we were away, at that point we decided we wanted to start out in a new place. We chose Oregon because (my husband) Ray`s father lived there. So my next four children were born in Oregon. My youngest was born on Feb. 14th-he was a Valentine`s baby-and I was 25 years old on the 18th, four days later. So I was not yet 25 when I had five children.
My husband started college on the GI Bill, and he was working full time and taking 18 hours and just couldn`t keep up with it all. He had a research paper to do, and I decided to do some of the research for him, just to help out.
The topic was ”peaceful atoms.” I learned, and I still remember, the process of atomic energy. Ultimately I ended up writing his paper, and I got an A. So that was my first real writing.
When I was 28 I decided I wanted to go to college. I`ve always had an interest in science, and that`s what I wanted to study. I wanted to learn how things work. Boys learn about all that stuff as children, from their toys. A toy car teaches them about acceleration, at a gut level. Girls played in the playhouse; they didn`t let girls play with the trains. I learned about acceleration in physics when I was 30 years old. And I had trouble; I really had to fight to grasp the concept.
At the same time I started to work, too. We had five kids, and that costs a lot. We had enough to make it, but my daughter wanted to take violin lessons and we couldn`t afford it. It was that kind of thing. Of course, soon you get to depend on the two incomes.
For a total of 12 years I was working and attending school while raising the kids. My husband was also working and going to school. Ultimately we both graduated together with MBAs, in 1976, the first married couple to be graduated from the University of Portland in that particular program. And this was when it became time to make a really tough decision.
I was 40, and I was a credit manager and I had my MBA. I had a little tiff with my boss, and I quit and went looking for a better job. Only I found myself not really looking very hard. I didn`t know what I wanted to do. And I wasn`t doing much. I was out of school and out of work. I had three daughters in college and two sons in high school, so they weren`t taking a lot of time. All of this concentrated energy that I`d needed for so many years had nowhere to go. And one day I started to get this idea for a story about a young woman who was living with these people who were not the same as her. And they viewed her with suspicion. She was taking care of an old man with a crippled arm, so they were letting her stay, grudgingly.
Finally, at about 11 at night, I said, ”I wonder if I could write a short story?” I thought it would be something to do to fill up the time while I was looking for a job.
I got into it, and the characters were coming together and it was fun. Only I didn`t know what I was writing about. What did these characters look like? Who was I writing about and was it real? I thought I was thinking prehistory, but I wasn`t sure. So I thought I`d do a little research.
I started with the encyclopedia, and that gave me a little information. Then I went to the library and began reading and taking books home. The more I read, the more the story kept growing, and I`d read about something and think of something new to add to the story. And I got so fired up about it.
I thought: ”Here`s this whole world and it`s fresh, it`s green; you can write fiction that`s never been written before. And it`s not cave man, Hollywood-style. We`re talking about people who were modern humans.”
I kept seeing that humanity between the lines. And I thought, ”Why don`t people know this? It`s all here. And I just went to my normal public library; it`s not as though I went to any special place.”
Finally, I just decided that I was going to be the one to tell the story. So I sat down at the typewriter and started telling the story to myself, and it kept growing, and I`d do more research and then write some more, and it just kept on growing.
The whole thing probably took no more than six months from the first idea until I had the first draft, but it was 14 to 16 hours a day. I just couldn`t wait when I got up in the morning to sit down at my typewriter and get back to work.
As I worked on the story, I was still applying for jobs and thought that I was just doing the writing to fill up time until I got a job. Then, about halfway through all this work, I got a fantastic job offer.
It was an important managerial position with a terrific salary, and it was what I thought I always wanted. But I was halfway through this story, and when I thought about giving it up I`d start to cry.
I asked them for a week to think about it. I told them I was considering another venture, one that had a much bigger risk factor to it. They offered me more money.
My husband had been really behind me in terms of writing. But when this job came up, he wanted me to take it, and he thought I could do both. But I knew I`d be putting all my creative thinking into the job if I took it, and I could never do both well. And I could not bear not to write that story.
Finally, I made up my mind, and I told my husband, ”I`m not going to take it.”
He looked at me like he didn`t know what I was talking about and said,
”You`re not going to take what?”
He wasn`t too happy, but finally he said, ”Whatever you decide, I`m behind you.”
When I told the company that wanted to hire me, they told me to name my price and I could have it. There was fate holding that carrot up in front of me, saying, ”Take the sure thing.”
But I couldn`t not write the story. So I turned down the job. And that decision forced me to be really serious, to call myself a writer. Then I began to study writing, and I went to my first writers` conference, which was where I met the woman who ultimately became my agent, Jean Naggar.
As I continued to write and rewrite I realized I had six books, not a short story, not just one novel. I wanted to tell the whole story, so it has been six books right from the start; they are not sequels to the first book.
I don`t know where the idea for Ayla (a Cro-Magnon child who becomes separated from her family as a child and then is raised by a clan of Neanderthals) came from, but I know where it led me.
It`s hard to tell where ideas come from. They float in the air. It`s really not the ideas; it`s what you do with them that makes the difference.
And I don`t know where my courage to make the decision came from either, but I just had to do it. But I was worried. I had three daughters in college, a boy who was a senior in high school and another one moving up through school. This is a commitment.
By this time, my salary was half our family income. So we really had to think about how long we could last without my working. And it took almost two years.
I have lots more ideas for books after I finish the six in this series. But I think that I will always want to do something where I have to learn something.
I`m so lucky. I get to learn anything in the world I want to and make a living at it.
The decision I made was right, of course, but there were plenty of moments on the road to publication when I had to look at a rejection letter and cry and just start trying all over again.
One publisher told me my story was too long, that no one would pay the money to buy such a long book by an unknown author. But if you believe in what you`re doing, you just don`t give up.
