Author/Independent-Publisher Nancy Mitchell is available to talk to small groups of Bay Area students on the following topics:

• The creation of The Changing Earth Trilogy.
      Earth Rising    Raging Skies    Global Warning
• Can I be an author?
• How do I create exciting stories?
• How can I get my stories or books published?
• How much marketing do I have to do?
• How much money will I make?
• Publishing today and tomorrow.
• Ebooks - the revolution is here!
• How much selling do I have to do?
• Creative idea exercise for your class.

    Nancy Mitchell was born in Kingsport, Tennessee, where she resided for 5 years. She and her family then moved to Brighton, Colorado, where she attended public school for twelve years. After graduating from the University of Colorado in Boulder, she was hired as a flight attendant by Pan American World Airways. Based in San Francisco for ten years, she flew mainly to cities bordering the Pacific Ocean with a few trips to London, Rio de Janeiro and New Delhi. When asked what her favorite city was, she would always say, "Hong Kong." The shopping was great and the food was even greater---important considerations for airline crew members! Another important criteria for Nancy was safe jogging paths---sometimes difficult to find in cosmopolitan cities.

    Nancy met her husband John, a pilot for American Airlines, in Fiji . Eighteen months later, they were married. John came with an instant family of three boys-- Dave, Tom and Mike---and two girls--Susan and Kathy---who had moved to Seattle from Connecticut. Daughter Jenny was born when Mike was 18, and they decided that six was enough! John retired from American Airlines in September of 1996.

    In addition to jogging around the world, reading and writing were always two of Nancy's most important hobbies. During John's days of flying model airplanes, Nancy was the newsletter editor of the model airplane club. When Jenny was in the third grade, Nancy was secretary of the PTA and became president of the PTA two years later. She was treasurer of Fremont Council PTA for two years and is currently council newsletter editor. She is also currently Peralta District PTA treasurer. She is a member of the Superintendent's Parent Advisory Committee and is a Fremont Unified School District surrogate parent who attends IEP meetings for special education students of all ages.

    Since Jenny was born with a physical disability, John and Nancy have had their hands full and their horizons expanded. Jenny had four surgeries (three of them orthopedic) before her first birthday, and Nancy once said she felt like she had given birth to a plaster cast! Jenny's fifth surgery was at age 3; the sixth surgery was at age 5, and the seventh and eighth surgeries were at age12 when her spine was fused and she remained hospitalized for 39 days battling Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome and a bleeding stomach ulcer. Jenny uses a motorized wheelchair to get around and needs an attached tray table at school. The Jenny of EARTH RISING, RAGING SKIES and GLOBAL WARNING was based on Jenny Mitchell, complete with sassy demeanor, sense of humor and wonderful friends and family. The arms and hands of the real Jenny are not quite as strong, however, as those of the fictional Jenny.

    In creating "The Changing Earth Trilogy," Nancy has called upon her knowledge of the world of Pan Am she explored in her twenties, the geology of the Bay Area, her familiarity with Fremont schools, the challenges of parenting a child with a disability, her love of adventure books and an often outrageous sense of humor. She wanted to create a best-seller-type of book for teenagers, something that was exciting to read. She feels that kids today don't read quite as much as they did twenty years ago, attributing this not only to the time spent on video games and computers but also to the fact that kids seem to have shorter attention spans for things that are not quite as exciting as they could be! ("This book is boring, Mom!" How many times have you heard that?)