First and foremost, I love a travel adventure. It is wonderful to experience new cultures, explore different parts of the country, try new things (like dog sledding, rappel off a cliff, a shark dive), and meeting wonderful people along the way.

Travel recharges my energy and boosts my positivity. I am the glass is half full kind of gal.

Perhaps growing up as an Air Force brat has something to do with my wanderlust. I was born in the Philippines and went to ten different schools by the time I graduated high school. I have lived in Germany, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, Florida, Texas, Montana, & Mississippi and now I have landed in a place I love, Fort Collins, Colorado. My husband and I hike as much as possible.

And yes, people in Colorado keep telling me I have a southern accent.

I earned my Bachelor of Science degree in Forestry from the University of Georgia. The summer before graduation I had a summer job cruising timber in Lake City, Florida. The company would drop me off in a remote area of swamps and timber land (before cell phones) and my job was to walk through the forest and collect data. One morning while cruising timber, I discovered the body of a young man. It was that event which led to my job with another timber company after graduation. That’s another story for another time. I was one of the first female foresters hired in the private sector where I worked in the timber industry for over twenty years. Now you know I go way back.

Prior to writing my own thriller, I edited five award-winning thrillers for my husband, also a thriller writer.  Writing does not flow naturally from my hands. I have a lot of ideas for stories, but how to write ninety-plus thousand words to complete a novel is like starting to play golf and spending the entire time in the sand trap.  After I finally finished my first novel, I decided I had fulfilled my obligation to write a story about a real-life hero in a fiction story. Yet, there is always something in my brain pushing me back to the keyboard.

I love to laugh and listen to classic rock. Most of all, I love my husband and children (all five of them).

And at the end of the day, I like a glass of wine and dark chocolate. The glass of wine is always full.

Check out DJ’s website: https://djsteelebooks.com/