I came very close to going into higher education; I guess I have an irrepressible urge to find ways to make someone's internal light bulb go off. My intrepid publisher says I like to fix things. I know I believe that good people really can change the world for the better. It's Ms. Fix-it who's behind my latest two books, Living with Bears Handbook, and Surviving Wildfire.

I wrote the first edition of Living with Bears: A Practical Guide to Bear Country back in 2006. (livingwithbears.com). I'm really proud that over the past decade it became the unofficial bible of living responsibly with wildlife. I know the expanded and updated second edition, Living with Bears Handbook, published in 2016, is going to be even more useful. It was supposed to come out in 2012. But a whole lot of life got in the way.

While I was buried in what I thought would be a year-long project my house in Colorado burned down in a horrific wildfire, with all my research and notes, along with everything else we owned. After discovering what it took to rebuild our lives, and learning first hand how many people were totally unprepared to start over, I was overcome by fix-it disease. I took a two-year detour from bears and wrote Surviving Wildfire. Get Prepared. Stay Alive. Rebuild Your Life. (survivingwildfire.com)

I like to think I emerged from the ashes a better person and a better writer, more easily able to dig down and bare the truths that are often hard to face. But it's not an experience I would wish on anyone, even the fourth grade teacher who used to rap my knuckles with a ruler to get me to stop scribbling and pay attention to memorizing something or other.

Losing everything you own is a profoundly life-altering experience. Forever after life will be divided into BF and AF. Being forced to let go of long-held dreams and discover how to move on and find new ones is something that changes you - either for the better or for the worse. A dozen neighbors also lost their homes that night. Some of them are dreaming new dreams. Others are lost and bitter, stuck in a past they can't seem to escape from.

I wrote Surviving Wildfire: Get Prepared, Stay Alive, Rebuild Your Life because there's nothing worse than standing in your rubble thinking about all the things you could and should have done differently. So I filled Surviving Wildfire with all the latest preparedness and recovery research, along with real-life ah-hahs and oh-nos you won't find anywhere else.

It's not a big book; you can read it cover to cover in a couple of hours. I know it's a couple of hours that will open your eyes and could save your home or even your life. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars and uncountable hours of heartache. (survivingwildfire.com) Then I wrote a handy pocket guide to stick on your refrigerator.

But the whole time the bears were nagging at me. The world was changing. The human landscape was becoming even more difficult to navigate. Human-bear conflicts were on the rise in many places, including my new home state of Florida. But there were also lots of new ways to prevent conflicts, and inspiring new stories of success I wanted to share.

Luckily my go-to chief scientific adviser, Washington's bear and cougar expert and Karelian Bear Dog Team leader Rich Beausoleil stuck with me all the way, and we dug back in and got to work. Starting over again was really hard, and there were times I wanted to crawl back into my den and stay there. But I couldn't let down all the well-respected bear experts from all over the continent who'd contributed to the book (and kept asking when it was coming out) or my saint of a husband and my ever-patient publisher.

I think my Fix-it disease is what sets both my handbooks and all my articles and non-fiction apart. It's pretty hard to read them and not be inspired to do something. Along the way in both books you'll find a lot that will have you reaching for the nearest post it note. And often something to smile about. Or say "Hey, Honey, did you know....."

So be forewarned: start reading and somewhere along the way you're going to be inspired to get up off your couch and go do something. But don't worry, you'll be glad you did.

For how I got started scribbling for a living, read on...

My first "book" was a 90-page narrative written in long hand in the loopy cursive of a thirteen-year-old dreamer. I penned a tale of a lost dog that after many misadventures was finally rescued and lived happily ever after. Throughout high school and college my term papers and reports were returned with notes scribbled in the margins urging me to consider a career in whatever I'd been writing about.

Apparently I was not that quick of a study when it came to my own future; it took me several more years to figure out that the passion my teachers mistook for interest in a field was a passion to communicate.

When the light bulb finally went off I took an abrupt left turn out of the insurance industry and into the world of advertising, where I got to put my ability to write enthusiastically and convincingly about anything to good use. Along the way I also wrote a couple of small mystery novels, several children's books and umpteen million articles.

Fast forward a couple of decades, as my husband and I decide to abandon our corporate careers in the big city before we need to consider assisted living, and turn our dream of living on a mountaintop out West into reality.

We had eleven great years to live our dreams - a lot more than many people have. For that I will be eternally grateful.

Where are we now? After finally settling into a "new" old log home on the outskirts of Fort Collins, Colorado, we discovered my husband's lungs would be a lot happier at sea level. So we took a deep breath, sold our home and most of our newly-acquired stuff and headed down to as close to sea level as you can get.

We live in a quiet little town on the Southern Gulf of Mexico less than a mile from the beach. We're working on restoring our property,getting rid of all the invasive vegetation and learning to live with a whole new cast of wild characters. We're volunteering and getting involved with the local parks and wildlife folks (Fix-it disease is incurable.)

Life isn't the same, but it's a good kind of different. And every day we are thankful for what we have: each other, our families, our friends, and a chance to dream some new dreams. And maybe help a few people (and bears) along the way.