I was born on a hot August night in Duluth, Minnesota, overlooking Lake Superior...starting my love affair with lakes. Before long, I was introduced to Lake Vermilion, near the Boundary Waters, and all my life I knew I had to get there, eventually.

But my father was transferred to Minneapolis when I was 9 years old and I grew up happily in a little suburb full of kids playing games. Sports pretty much consumed my life...that, and reading...until my senior year of high school when I inadvertently got the lead in a play at an all-girls private high school...whew...and met Mary...well, more than just met Mary.

We got married during Mary's senior year of high school. I had just graduated from Benilde, a private boys H.S. and had started my first quarter at the University of Minnesota. We received the reluctant blessing and best wishes of our parents, we were on our own. Thus, we were very practical and pragmatic and only had two children while I was in school...but I did manage to graduate and without any loans or debt. Don't ask me how, it was magic. I graduated in 5 years with degrees in English/Creative Writing, Communications, Theater and Education.

So, without any debt, we were able to sell the mobile home we had bought when we were married for a profit, and put our equity into a sweet little house in a good little neighborhood - Edina Morningside. I got a teaching job in an experimental school teaching English, improvisational theater, creative writing, and pretty much anything I wanted. It was a gas.

After three years, we decided to try country living and squatted in an abandoned farm house tending to the absentee farmer’s horses and cattle. We sold the Morningside house for a nice profit, and so had some cash for the first time in our married lives.

The "experiment' at my school ended, so I took a sabbatical and Mary and I taught at a school in Bogota', Colombia. While there, we adopted Alexandra...so now three children, and got pregnant with what turned out to be twin girls... whew! Two to five in a year!

So, broke again and back to the U.S., we received a little help from our parents who took pity on us, I'm afraid, and we bought an old farm...and I continued teaching. I loved teaching, especially creative writing, directing plays and coaching; wouldn't have done anything else. Until declining enrollment hit my school district and I was abruptly introduced to the pink slip, i.e. lay off potentiality.

So, eventually sold the farm and moved back to the city. I took a job training at large financial planning company and started my own planning company, Munkeby Financial, Inc., with my son, a family friend and my daughter.

The diligence and hard work had paid off as I became financially independent at age 40. I still loved helping people work toward their own financial independence, but I was able to make coaching my twins a priority in my life. That paid off too, as we were able to take first place in our elite soccer league, and won two national tournaments. This also resulted in scholarships for the twins.

When I retired from financial advising, handing my company off to my son and his business partner, my first thought was how to give back, wrap up my second career, and begin a third…one I’d wanted to try my hand at all my life: a professional writer. The first book would have to be A Million Dollars: How to Achieve Financial Independence Before Your Parents Do. My way to give back, from a successful career, to the demographic that needs financial literacy the most.

Since then, I’ve decided to spend the rest of my years writing, mostly fiction. My first venture was Back to the Island referred to as a “roller coaster series of mistaken identities, surprise reunions, and romances that are anything but traditional.”

I suspect all of my books will take pokes, maybe even roundhouses, at things I believe need at least a poke. The pokes in Back to the Island are woven into a plot including “danger, menace, and entangled affairs in a Bahamian paradise.” Will my next novel is intended for millennials or anybody who feels the U.S. is not moving in the right direction.

Mary and I eventually made it to Lake Vermilion, where we found a small resort, Birch Point Inn, with five cabins...five kids, five cabins, worked out pretty well. During that time I lectured at colleges and universities to graduates regarding financial and career literacy.

After sixteen years we moved back to the Minneapolis area to be closer our family. We now live in a pristine spot on Minnehaha Creek.