Sherie Posesorski

Sherie Posesorski is a Toronto-based author, editor and book reviewer whom is a graduate of the MFA writing program at Columbia University in New York, and a former editor for Harlequin Enterprises. She has had book reviews and personal essays in a variety of publications across Canada and in the New York Times Book Review. She is also the author of a previous novel Escape Plans which was part of Coteau's best selling series, "In the Same Boat".

She currently divides her time between Toronto and Florida.

From the author:

What started me wanting to write way back in grade three was the white and yellow pen I finally earned, long, long after most of my classmates, for my penmanship. It seemed like I'd never get a pen and would be stuck writing for the rest of my life with a big fat dull pencil. It didn't help my left-handed penmanship that most of the desks were right- handed ones which meant that I had to squirm myself into a pretzel to write. It didn't help either it wasn't so easy to copy the teacher's writing style on the blackboard when all I could see was strokes of blur. Along with the blessed pen, also came the cursed black framed secretary glasses, after my teacher noticed my squinting and recommended to my parents I get my vision checked.

So there I was, ready to write, pen in hand and glasses on, but what to write? Or more importantly, who to write! I could write in the diary I was given as a birthday present, but diary writing seemed to me, even then, like talking to yourself. Why write if nobody else reads what you write?

On one of my favourite TV shows, Commander Tom, Commander Tom was always telling us to write him. Now that I had my own pen, and the lined writing tablet that my mother used for letter-writing, I did. And got back an autographed picture addressed to me! There and then I decided to write every TV and movie star that I liked, to tell them how much I liked them and what I liked about them, and to remember them, could they please send me an autographed photograph?

I wrote to Flipper and The Littlest Hobo (if they were smart enough to have their shows, they must be smart enough to understand my letter when read them to by their trainers.) Soon I had enough photos to cover one bedroom wall, then another.

The big test of how good my letter writing was determined by the spit test. If the signature was really in ink signed personally by the star, the ink would blur when I carefully wet it with spit on my little finger. Even though the majority of signatures were stamped on, I persisted, believing that if I just wrote a better letter, I would have more autographed pictures than even the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood.

And that's how I began to write.