Today is July second and, in a very real way, it’s my lowercase independence day.

Thirty-three years ago today, when my two kids and I arrived in Seattle, I was a refugee from a bad marriage and a worse divorce. I was driving a three year-old Cutlass Supreme Brougham which I had bought used when it was a year old. At the time, my husband told me I that I “never should have bought that car and would never be able to pay for it.” It had taken five long days to drive up from Phoenix, towing a U-Haul trailer, loaded with all our worldly goods.

On that seemingly endless trip, the kids were tired and cranky, and I was scared. Make that terrified. I had left my job as a district manager for an insurance company, returning to the role of agent and transferring myself to a place where, other than my sister, I knew no one. As we traveled, I was filled with questions and doubts. Was I doing the right thing? Would I be able to support my kids? Coming up through northern California and seeing the clouds parked over the mountains of southern Oregon, I worried that I was taking them from the light to the dark. There were times on that long journey when I cried, but only when the kids were asleep. I didn’t want them to know how scared I was.

As we came into Seattle on I-5 in the middle of a weekday afternoon, one of the first things I saw after the skyline, was the I-90 intersection. It wasn’t the spaghetti noodle tangle of lanes it is now. Instead, back then, it was a single overpass, ending abruptly in mid-air and looming over the freeway. I wasn’t a writer back then, but that image stayed with me. In fact, it graced the cover of the first edition of Trial by Fury, my third book. What I thought at the time was this: What if I had taken a wrong turn and driven off the edge of that road to nowhere? In fact, what if that’s what this whole trip was all about?

We moved into a downtown condo with my sister. My kids became some of the first Denny Regrade kids. (By the way, the name Denny Regrade seems to have fallen out of favor these days. It’s Belltown all over, but at the time I named Beau’s new condo Belltown Terraces, that part of the Regrade wasn’t called Belltown at all.)

Six months after arriving in Seattle, I enrolled in the Dale Carnegie Course, expecting that “winning friends and influencing people” would turn me into a better insurance salesman. (No, I never succumbed to the term saleswoman. My father was an insurance salesman, and so was I. And please do NOT call me an “authoress,” either. I write books. I’m an author. Period.)

Much to my surprise, Dale Carnegie didn’t improve my insurance sales track record. In fact, it did the opposite. What it did instead, was lead me inevitably to what I do now–to writing. Following one of my required Dale Carnegie presentations–a talk about how an encounter with a serial killer in Tucson in the early seventies changed my life–one of my fellow students took me aside and said, “Someone should write a book about that.”

I had always wanted to write, and that simple seven word sentence, part of a Thursday night conversation, propelled me to do something about it. Three days later, on a Sunday afternoon after church, I pulled out a yellow legal pad and began writing my first manuscript–one which, though completed, was never published. (And it won’t be published, either. Don’t ask.)

Since then I’ve written more than fifty books. In fact, I finished the next Ali book, Cold Betrayal, just last night. It’s currently out to my first two proof-readers and will go to my editor in New York before the week is out.

So today, while my husband and my agent read the manuscript, I need to get the book mark request envelopes opened, sign the bookmarks, and get them in the mail. It’s a huge stack. And no, I do not have a secretary to handle that because, opening the envelopes and reading the notes that accompany the requests is also a labor of love.

In the thirty-three years between July 2, 1981 and July 2, 2014, my life has changed remarkably. I’ve gone from being a single parent with two little kids living in a downtown condo to being a married parent of five, living in a house overlooking a lush garden. That’s where I am this morning, sitting on the back verandah keeping watch and guarding the fishpond from Mr. “I LOVE Your Fish” Heron. Six grandkids, five girls and one boy, have greatly enriched my life, and so have any number of beloved dog companions. I tell you truly that I never envisioned the kind of life my family and I enjoy now all those years ago when I was dragging that U-Haul up through northern California. And that lifestyle is entirely due to the people who read my books.

So Friday is the Fourth of July–the real uppercase Independence Day. You may be wondering what we’ll be doing this weekend–roasting hot dogs, swimming in the pool, watching fireworks? Nope not this year.

On Friday afternoon, a mini-bus will come by the house to take a load of people to the airport for a British Air flight to London and eventually to Rome. Everyone is going but Bella. When the suitcases come out, she is going to be plucked. I have a feeling she will be visiting her displeasure on our wonderful dog sitter, but that’s why we have a great carpet cleaning technician who is already scheduled to pay us a visit in early August.

And where are we going after Rome? Pretty much everywhere. We’re taking a two week Rick Steves family adventure, eighteen people in our group plus two guides, one of the guide’s husband, and the bus driver. Our family will have the bus to ourselves. We’ll end up back in Paris on July 20th, just in time to get home and start the Remains of Innocence tour on the 22nd. I already have my hair and nail appointments scheduled for the 21st.

My webmistress, who is also my daughter-in-law, will be on the bus. Blogging may be possible, but then again, maybe not. This is a vacation after all–a paid vacation it turns out, funded by my readers and fans.

So thank you, folks. I thank you and so does Bill. Ditto for the grandkids, ages eight to almost twenty-one. As for Bella? Well, maybe not so much, but I’m pretty sure she’ll get over it.